North Carolina State Normal & Industrial College 
Historical Publications 

Number 1 



Race Elements in the White Population of 
North Carolina 



By R. D. W. CONNOR 

Secketary of the North Carolina Historical Commission 



Issued under the Direction of the Department of History 
W. C. JACKSON, Editor 



PUBLISHED BY THE COLLEGE 
1920 



North Carolina State Normal & Industrial 
College Historical Publications 

PRICE $1.00 EACH 

Number 1 — Race Elements in the White Population of 
North Carolina R. D. W. Connor 

Number 2 — Revolutionary Leaders of North Carolina 

R. D. W. Connor 

Number 3 — Ante-Bellum Builders of North Carolina 

R. D. W. Connor 



lOWAKDS & BROUQHTON PRINTINQ 00., RALEIQH, N. 0. 



North Carolina State Normal & Industrial College 
Historical Publications 

Number 1 



Rage Elements in the White Population of 
North Carolina 



Bt R.^dVw. CONNOR 

Secretary of the North Carolina Historical Commission 



Issued under the Direction of the Department of History 
W. C. JACKSON, Editor 



PUBLISHED BY THI C0LLE6E 
1920 



Moiiojiruiih 



JAN 12 1921 









EDITOR'S PREFACE 

In an effort to promote' historical investigation and 
study among its own students, and do its part in pre- 
serving and putting in usable shape the rich and valu- 
able material relating to the history of North Carolina, 
the Department of History of this College announces 
the establishment of the North Carolina State Normal 
and Industrial College Historical Publications. 

There are unlimited opportunities in our State's 
history for special monographic studies, and this will 
be the particular though not exclusive field of work 
for these Publications. Studies relating to the contri- 
butions of women to the State's history will be empha- 
sized. 

The Publications have an auspicious beginning in 
being able to have the first three numbers contributed 
by R. D. W. Connor, Secretary of the North Carolina 
Historical Commission, and Lecturer on North Caro- 
lina History at this College during 1912, 1913, 1914. 

Number 3 of the Publications was published in 
1914; number 2 appeared in 1916, and number 1, 
after much unavoidable delay, is now ready for the 
press. 

The Editor. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

These five lectures were delivered at the [Forth Caro- 
lina State Normal and Industrial College for Women 
in the winter of 1912. They are printed here just as 
they were delivered. The purpose for which they 
were prepared did not admit of a full and elaborate 
discussion of the subject; designed to stimulate inter- 
est which might lead to further study, the treatment is 
purposely "sketchy" and general, rather than detailed. 
As an aid to any who may care to go further into the 
subject, a brief, but by no means complete bibliogra- 
phy is added composed of books easily accessible to 
any person into whose hands these lectures may chance 
to fall. 

R. D. W. Connor. 
Raleigh, N". C. 
December 10, 1919. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Introductory 7 

The English in North Carolina 20 

The Highland Scotch in North Carolina 44 

The Scotch-Irish in North Carolina 69 

The Germans in North Carolina 91 

Bibliography 113 



Race Elements in the White Population of 
North Carolina 



INTRODUCTORY 

The history of North Carolina during the past de- 
cade has been characterized by a remarkable develop- 
ment along two parallel lines, one leading to a wide- 
spread material prosperity, the other to a popular 
inteUectual renaissance. Neither would haye been 
possible without the other. One manifests itself m 
the hum of mills, the shriek of whistles, the rush and 
roar of trains, personifying the power and energy ot 
an awakening people. The other, no less a personifi- 
cation of power, is nevertheless a silent movement, 
the energy of which is generated in the quiet of the 
school room and the closet of the student. Both move- 
ments are the results of forces that for two and a half 
centuries have been shaping our history and controll- 
iBg our destiny, and because we are just beginning to 
recognize this fact, we are turning more and more to 
the past to seek therein an explanation of the present 
and a forecast of the future. ^ ^ „ ^ i 

One of the most striking features of this intellectual 
awakening is the recent rapid development of our his- 
torical consciousness. Out of it ^^-\ .^P;^!^^ /^^^ 
activities as the creation of ---7^^^^^ and 
patriotic societies, the preservation of battlefields and 
historic houses, the marking of historic sites, the 



8 Race Elements of ISTorth Carolina 

celebration of historical anniversaries, and the numer- 
ous other methods by which mankind has always 
preserved the history of the race. In the past decade 
alone we have erected in North Carolina more monu- 
ments and written more books than in all the previous 
two hundred and fifty years of our history. 

The development of the inward spirit, of which these 
activities are but the outward manifestations, means 
much in the life of our people. "The spirit of a peo- 
ple," says Captain Mason, "is the history of a people 
impersonated in the life of a people. If there is no 
history of a people there is no spirit of a people".^ 
Without such a spirit the people perish. It seems to 
me, therefore, that nothing can be more important to 
a democratic people than the cultivation of such a 
spirit. Great and rapid material development may 
prove anything but an unmixed blessing if it be not 
accomj)anied by a corresponding development of the 
mental and moral resources of the State, and there is 
no better way to develop such resources and to 
strengthen this side of our life than by the study of 
history. Such study broadens the intelligence, strength- 
ens the character, and confirms the patriotism of the 
people, and when the day of trial and stress comes, as 
such days do come to all people, these qualities become 
the chief assets of a democratic State. 

"A democracy," said Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, "can 
not afford to be ungrateful. Built as it is on loyal 
service and patriotic sacrifice, the day of its forgetting 
will be the day of its undermining. Other nations 
trace their origin back through a long series of suc- 



1. The Value of Historical Memorials in a Democratic 
State {Publications of the No7-th Carolina Historical 
Commission, Bulletin No. 7, i). 90). 



Introductory 9 

cessful and unsuccessful wars. We find our national 
genesis in a single war; and the measure of our great- 
ness and stability will be the measure of our gratitude 

to the men who made Yorktown possible 

JSTatioual unity and stability must be built upon a 
foundation of common sympathies, sacrifices and 
triumphs. Every battlefield of the Revolution, where 
American valor was tested and not found wanting, will 
yet become a link in the golden chain of national 
brotherhood. The men who fought here and the men 
who have since wrought here are nation builders. 
Slowly but surely the truth of history is widening its 
domain, and a heroic past is returning to make a 
heroic and united present."" 

The State of JSTorth Carolina has erected this college 
and her other institutions of learning for the purpose 
of training her young men and young women in the 
duties of citizenship in a democracy. Every function 
which we are called upon to perform as citizens comes 
to us out of the past moulded into shape by its influ- 
ence and charged with its spirit. This influence we 
must understand, this spirit we must appreciate if we 
are to perform the duties and meet the responsibilities 
of citizenship intelligently and effectively. It follows, 
therefore, that a knowledge of the history of the peo- 
ple among whom we are to live and work is a very 
necessary part of our equipment for citizenship. 

"Elnow thyself" is a wise injunction that applies to 
a commonwealth and its people with no less force than 
to an individual. What are the chief geographical 
features of the State in which we are to work ? Whence 



The Significance of History in a Democracy (Publica- 
tions of the North Carolina Historical Commission, 
Bulletin No. 6.) 



10 Race Elements of N^okth Carolina 

came its people? What are their characteristics? 
Their needs? Their capabilities? Wherein are they 
strong? Wherein weak? In what virtues do they 
need to be strengthened? In what vices do they need 
to be curbed? How have they borne themselves in the 
great crises of the Republic's history? Bravely? 
Openly? Effectively? Or have they been cowardly in 
battle ? Secretive in council ? Sloven in work ? What 
have they wrought that is worthy the admiration of 
mankind? Have they contributed aught to the science 
of human government? To the well-being of society? 
To the industrial development of the world? What 
are their ideals? Their aspirations? Their hopes and 
desires? Have they made any contribution to litera- 
ture? To art? To knowledge? Finally, and above 
all, what spirit has animated them as they have gone 
about their tasks, faced their responsibilities, and done 
their work? 

In the course of these lectures which your President 
has asked me to deliver here, I cannot hope to do more 
than suggest answers to these inquiries. But if they 
shall help to stimulate in any of you a greater interest 
in the history of North Carolina and her people, to 
develop in your hearts and minds a larger and more 
intelligent State pride, and to confirm in you the con- 
victions already implanted in you by the influence and 
teaching of this college that North Carolina is worthy 
of your very best thoughts and most earnest endeavors, — 
if I can contribute even in but a small degree to these 
ends, I shall have accomplished all that I hope to do. 

It is a common statement frequently heard in public 
addresses and seen in public print that the population 
of North Carolina is composed of almost pure English 
stock and contains but a negligible percentage of for- 



Introductory 11 

eign elements. If by foreign elements is meant persons 
born in other countries than the United States, the 
percentage contained in the population of Worth Caro- 
lina is indeed negligible; but if the phrase means other 
stock than English — and this indeed is the sense in 
which it is generally used in this connection — the state- 
ment is not correct. Speaking now with reference only 
to the white race, the population of ISTorth Carolina of 
today is a composite population made up of a mixture 
of four racial elements, — first, the commercially- 
minded, law-abiding, self-reliant Anglo-Saxon; second, 
the Celtic Scotch-Highlander, picturesque, proud and 
sensitive; third, the democratic, liberty-loving, religi- 
ously-minded Scotch-Irishman; and finally, the Ger- 
man, shrewd, economical, conservative, a lover of 
learning and of religion. By these peoples, and their 
descendants, the history of Worth Carolina has been 
made and her destiny has been shaped ; and the typical 
North Carolinian of the twentieth century is neither 
Saxon, nor Celt, nor Teuton, but is the off-spring of 
the three. 

It is my purpose, in these lectures to discuss the 
origin and characteristics of these races in North Caro- 
lina during the colonial period and to suggest very 
briefly the contributions of each to the history of the 
State, 

The history of North Carolina begins with the com- 
ing of the English. Driven on by the Anglo-Saxon's 
keen, insatiable hunger for land, Englishmen about the 
middle of the seventeenth century crossed the Virginia 
boundary line, sought out the rich bottom lands along 
the shores of Albemarle Sound, and there laid the 
foundations of the State. In all parts of the world 
wherever the Englishman has gone in any considerable 



12 Race Elements of North Carolina 

numbers, whether in India, in South Africa, in Austra- 
lia, or in America, he has carried with him the social, 
industrial, political and intellectual customs of his na- 
tive island. The English ideal of home life, the 
English industrial system, the English principles of 
politics and government, the English language and 
literature sooner or later become the dominant forces 
wheresoever the Englishman sets up his household 
gods. North Carolina has been no exception to this 
rule. Although the first English settlers were speedily 
followed by the Scotch and the Germans in large num- 
bers, who spread out over many of the choicest por- 
tions of the country, yet the customs, the government, 
and the language of North Carolina from the first have 
been those of the English settlers on the Albemarle. 
A study of this English settler reveals to us a prosy, 
commonplace individual, possessed of an immeasurable 
amount of hard, commonsense, whose chapter in our 
history has been more instructive than romantic. In 
him we find all the qualities essential for the conquest 
of the wilderness and the founding of a commonwealth. 
He had courage, foresight, determination, and he 
possessed, too, the instincts of the home-maker and an 
intense devotion to liberty, law, and justice according 
to English conceptions and English standards. To him 
we owe it that these standards were firmly planted in 
the soil of North Carolina. His struggles to preserve 
in the wild woods of Carolina the great principles of 
liberty which his forefathers had wrung from the 
mailed hands of tyrant kings in the wild woods of 
Britain, no doubt frequently led him into excesses and 
violences. But what of it ! Shall we not pardon some- 
thing to the spirit of liberty? Truly does an eloquent 
Carolinian exclaim : "If, in their remoteness and isola- 



Introdttctory 13 

tion, our ancestors ever strayed into lawlessness, it 
was the light struck from violated law by the mailed 

hand of oppression that led them astray 

Their conduct was simply a pure and priceless demon- 
stration of the political genius and self-governing pas- 
sion of the Anglo-Saxon race."^ During the early 
years of our history these English settlers took up arms 
and went forth to battle more than once in defense of 
their ideals of constitutional liberty and achieving suc- 
cess at last, they wrote them imperishably into the 
Constitution of 1776 whence they have been handed 
down to us as our most precious legacy. 

But if we find the English settler on the Albemarle 
prosaic and unromantic, we shall find his Scotch neigh- 
bor on the upper Cape Fear picturesque and interest- 
ing enough. The genius of Sir Walter Scott has 
thrown a halo of romance about the Scotch-Highlander 
as he appears on his native heath which he does not 
lose even amid the forests of America. The Highland- 
ers were a strong and active race, large in stature, well 
developed in body, robust in health. Their wild life 
among their native highlands imposed upon them occu- 
pations that developed strength and courage and 
activity both of mind and body. Following the chase 
over pathless mountains, waging constant warfare 
arflong themselves and with their neighbors of the low- 
lands, had trained them to a keenness of sight and swift- 
ness of limbs that rivalled those characteristics in the 
American Indian. Their wild romantic life developed 
in them "firmness of decision, fertility in resources, 
ardor in friendship, love of country, and generous en- 



3. Alderman, E. A.: William Hooper, "The Prophet of 
American Independence," pp. 13-15. 



14 Kace Elements of !N"orth Carolina 

thusiasm." Brought up to the use of arms in the midst 
of perpetual violence, accustomed to occupations re- 
quiring great physical endurance and courage, the 
Highlanders were taught to admire to excess physical 
strength and prowess, to bear without complaint the 
severest hardships, and to despise the comforts and 
luxuries of civilized society as fit only for effeminate 
cowards. 

It was during the decade from 1730 to 1740 that the 
Highlanders began to come to North Carolina. Op- 
pressed by both political and economic tyranny in their 
native land, many thousands of them sought relief by 
turning their faces to the setting sun. Shipload after 
shipload reached the shores of the 'New World, and 
most of them found their way to the Cape Fear in 
North Carolina. Bringing with them their picturesque 
costumes and their peculiar customs which in Europe 
had made them a race apart, they attempted to repro- 
duce on the Cape Fear the life which they had lived 
on the Clyde. In their new homes comfort and plenty, 
if not luxury and wealth, awaited them, and they soon 
attained in North Carolina to a degree of prosperity 
that in their Highland homes would have been counted 
wealth. And yet they did not soon forget their native 
land. In the forests of the New World, as far as possi- 
ble, they kept up their native customs and spoke the 
language of their fathers. They still wore their picr--^^'*C^ 
turesque costumes, and when they met the English at 
Moore's Creek Bridge in 1776 many of them were 
armed with the weapons their fathers had worn to 
battle at Culloden. 

The Revolution wrought great changes in their lives. 
A new nation was born and the Highlanders were 
forced to adapt themselves to the new order. Grad- 



Introductory 15 

ually they changed their costumes to suit their new 
conditions, their language to suit their new associates, 
and their customs to suit their new country. As the 
older leaders died out, others who had not known the 
beauties and the glories of the Highlands, come to fill 
their places. Thus the life of the Old World passed 
away and that of the New "World took its place. To 
this New World, whose history has been so enriched 
and colored by this splendid race, the descendants of 
the Highlanders have brought the same abiding love 
and loyalty which their fathers so faithfully gave to 
the old. 

To the west of the Highlanders we find another ele- 
ment of Scotch population, which differed in many 
important particulars from their brethren of the upper 
Cape Fear and bore a closer resemblance to their 
English cousins of the east. These were the Scotch- 
Irish who began to find their way to the New World 
about the beginning of the second quarter of the 
eighteenth century. Landing for the most part at 
Philadelphia, they followed the course marked out by 
the foothills of the Alleghany Mountains, until they 
had dispersed themselves in small settlements through- 
out the Piedmont regions of Virginia and North Caro- 
lina. Piling their furniture in creaking wagons and 
on pack-horses, with the women and children inse- 
curely and uncomfortably seated on top, while the 
men walked or rode horseback alongside, they followed 
the rivers and valleys until they found lands that 
suited them and then pitched their tents and began to 
build their log cabins. During a single winter more 
than a thousand of their wagons passed through the 
little village of Salisbury. Another stream of these 
settlers, landing at Charleston, moved up the banks of 



16 Race Elements of North Carolina 

the Yadkin, the Catawba and the Broad rivers until 
they met the stream from Pennsylvania. Before the 
outbreak of the Revolution the Scotch-Irish had scat- 
tered all through the hills and valleys and along the 
river banks of Central North Carolina, adding to our 
population an element that has written many of the 
best chapters in our history. Sensitive about his 
rights, he was ever ready in the fear of God to defend 
them with a calm, cool, unflinching courage. "Kings 
and governors were kings and governors to him only so 
long as they obeyed the law and were faithful to the 

rights of the people His liberty consisted 

in laws made by the consent of the people, and the 
due execution of those laws. He was free not from 
the law, but by the law." With this love of liberty, 
the Scotch-Irishman joined in close union a stern relig- 
ious faith and an intense love of learning. The 
"church and the schoolhouse followed them as shadows 
follow the sun." Among no other element of our 
population have the minister and the teacher exercised 
so general an influence, or held so conspicuous a place 
in leadership. Of the Scotch-Irish, therefore, we may 
say that he brought with him a love of liberty as intense 
as that of the Englishman, but carrying with it less 
reverence for constitutional forms and legal precedents. 
Less ardent in his nature than the Highlander, he 
displayed in the early crisis of our history a sounder 
political judgment and a calmer temperament; he had 
a religious faith as deep but not so emotional; though 
not so picturesque and interesting, he has been a more 
conservative force in our history and has added a 
greater stability to our character as a people. 

From Pennsylvania, following the same route as the 
Scotch-Irish, came a fourth element in our population 



Introductoby 17 

who became near neighbors of the Scotch. These were 
industrious and thrifty Germans who settled along the 
waters of the Yadkin and Catawba rivers. A few of 
these came as adventurers to follow careers as hunters 
and trappers. Others came in search of cheap land. 
Still others came for religious reasons, cheerfully brav- 
ing the dangers of the sea and the hardships of the 
wilderness in their search for religious freedom. Side 
by side with their cabins, went up their schoolhouses 
and churches. Like the Highlanders they brought the 
language and customs of the Old World to their homes 
in the New World. The German was the language of 
their church services. Their teachers taught it in their 
schools, and their children's textbooks were written in 
it. The older people clung tenaciously to it. It was the 
language of their cradles, of their altars, and of their 
firesides. Their ministers used it when they baptised 
them. They were married by a German service. They 
had heard the funeral sermons of their mothers and 
fathers preached in the German. All their sacred 
memories were connected with it. But they too had to 
face the same hard experience as the Scotch-Highland- 
ers, for their descendants gradually dropped their 
fathers' tongue for that of their new home. The Ger- 
mans were thrifty, industrious and intelligent. They 
practiced an unbounded hospitality, and in their homes 
were open-hearted, simple, conscientious and indepen- 
dent. Though always law-abiding, they took but little 
active interest in politics. But in their industrial 
affairs they set an example that their Scotch and Eng- 
lish countrymen might well have imitated. All the 
early travelers praise them for their neat and tidy 
homes, their clean and well cultivated farms, their fat, 
sleek cattle, and their bountiful barns and pantries. 
2 



18 Race Elements of North Carolina 

The center of the German settlement was the church 
and schoolhouse; their chief book was the Bible of 
Luther. They were a gentle lovable people, domestic 
in their habits, peaceful in their deportment, frank and 
open in their speech and manner, shrewd but honest 
in their business dealings. 

Estimates of the population of North Carolina at 
different periods prior to the census of 1790 vary- 
widely; there are, however, sufficient data to justify 
us in estimating the total population in 1760 at 130,- 
000. The same data lead to the conclusion that at that 
time the English formed a little more than a third, 
the Scotch about one-third, the Germans less than one- 
ninth, and negro-slaves about one-fourth of the total. 
Rejecting all other elements of European origin, — i. e., 
French, Swiss and Welsh — as too small to be taken 
into account, and also rejecting the Indians, we arrive 
at the following analysis of the population of North 
Carolina in 1760: 

English 45,000 

Scotch (Highlanders and Scotch-Irish) 40,000 

Germans 15,000 

Negroes 30,000 

Total 130,000 

The English and Scotch were born subjects of the 
British Crown; the Germans, therefore, were the only 
important foreign element in the white population. 
To place them, and those who claimed titles to prop- 
erty derived from them, upon an equality with the 
English and Scotch, the Assembly, in 1764, enacted 
"that all Foreign Protestants heretofore inhabiting 
within this Province, and dying seized of any Lands, 



Introductory 19 

Tenements, or Hereditaments, shall, forever hereafter, 
be deemed, taken, and esteemed to have been natural- 
ized, and entitled to all the Rights, Privileges, and 
Advantages of natural Born Subjects." 

Such are the people who have made the history of 
JSTorth Carolina and from whom the modern North 
Carolinian has sprung. You cannot understand him 
unless you understand his origin and the influences 
that have shaped his life. JHe possesses the English- 
man's love of home, hatred of tyranny, and respect 
for constitutional forms and precedents; the Highland- 
er's unflinching loyalty to a cause or a leader, high 
sense of personal dignity and honor, and intense pas- 
sions usually well under control but fierce and terri- 
ble when aroused ; the Scotch-Irishman's deep spiritual 
nature, stern, uncompromising religious faith, and de- 
votion to religious liberty ; and the German's simplicity 
of manner, frankness of speech, and honest shrewdness 
in business. It is with the hope that we may get an 
insight into the character of this modern !N"orth Caro- 
linian in whose hands lies the future of this Common- 
wealth that I shall present to you in my subsequent 
lectures a study of each of the races from which he has 
sprung. 



II 

The English in North CaroHna 

Sometime between the years 1653 and 1660 pioneers 
of English blood began to find their way from Virginia 
to the shores of Albemarle Sound where they laid the 
foundations of North Carolina. 

A glance at the map will show why North Carolina 
received its first permanent settlers from Virginia. 
The dangerous character of the Carolina coast and 
the absence of good harborage made the approach too 
difficult and uncertain to admit of colonization directly 
from Europe. This became apparent from Sir Walter 
Raleigh's failure in his first attempt to plant a colony 
on Eoanoke Island, and in 1587 Raleigh himself di- 
rected John White in command of the second colony to 
seek a site on Chesapeake Bay. His commands, 
through no fault of White's, were not obeyed, and the 
colony failed. Twenty-two years later the London 
Company, guided by Raleigh's experience, directed the 
Jamestown colony towards the Chesapeake. The first 
settlers, for obvious reasons, sought lands lying along 
navigable streams; consequently the water courses to 
a large extent determined the direction of the colony's 
growth. Many of the streams of Southeastern Vir- 
ginia flow toward Currituck and Albemarle sounds in 
North Carolina ; and the sources of the most important 
rivers of Eastern North Carolina are in Virginia. 
Furthermore the soil, the climate, the vegetation, and 
the animal life of the Albemarle region are of the same 
character as those of Southeastern Virginia. It should 
be remembered, too, that until 1663 this region was 
an organic part of Virginia. Nothing, therefore, was 



English 21 

more natural than that the planters of Virginia search- 
ing for good bottom lands, should gradually extend 
their plantations southward along the shores of Albe- 
marle Sound and the rivers that flow into it. 

The Virginians early manifested a lively interest in 
the Albemarle region. Nansemond county, Virginia, 
which adjoins North Carolina, was settled as early as 
1609, and during the following years many an adven- 
turous hunter, trader, and explorer made himself 
familiar with the waters that pour into Albemarle 
and Currituck sounds. During the next thirty years 
the Virginia authorities sent numerous expeditions 
into what is now Eastern ISTorth Carolina, ^ and the 
sons of Governor Yeardley boasted in 1654 that the 
northern country of Carolina was explored by "two 
Virginians born."^ 

These expeditions were naturally followed by a 
southward movement of settlers, but just when this 
movement began cannot be stated with accuracy. In 
1653 Roger Green, a clergyman of !N"ansemond county, 
who had become interested in the Albemarle section, 
obtained a grant of ten thousand acres for the first 
one hundred persons who should settle on Roanoke 
River, south of Chowan, and one hundred acres for 
himself "as a reward for his own first discovery and 
for his encouragement of the settlemeiit."^ Whether 
he followed this grant with an actual settlement is 
not known, but certain it is that by the year 1660 
George Durant, John Battle, Thomas Relfe, Roger 



1. Reports of these expeditions may be found In Colonial 

Records of North Carolina, Vol. I., W. L. Saunders, 
editor, and in Narratives of Early Carolina, 1650- 
1708, S. A. Salley, editor. 

2. Salley, S. A.— Narratives of Early Carolina, 25-29. 

3. Colonial Records of North Carolina, I., 17. 



22 Race Elements of IS'orth Carolina 

Williams, Thomas Jarvis, and others, had purchased 
lauds from the ludiaus who dwelt along the waters 
of Albemarle Sound and had settled there.* Many 
others encouraged by their example followed these ad- 
venturous leaders, and in 1665 the surveyor of Albe- 
marle declared that a county "fortie miles square will 
not comprehend the Inhabitants there already seated."^ 
These settlers for the most part, came from Virginia; 
but others came also and at the close of tha first decade 
of its history the Albemarle colony contained fourteen 
hundred inhabitants between sixteen and sixty years 
of age, and the settlements extended from Chowan 
River to Currituck Sound. 

It is worthy of note, as illustrative of the character 
of these early settlers, that they came not as conquer- 
ors driving the natives from their hunting-grounds and 
seizing their lands by force, but that in every instance 
they came with peaceful purpose to purchase for valu- 
able considerations the land which the native popula- 
tion willingly sold. Indeed, so universal was this 
practice that in 1662 the English government, which 
wished all land titles to be derived from the Crown, 
ordered that titles purchased from the Indians should 
be disregarded and that no grants should be held valid 
unless taken out according to the law of Virginia. The 
oldest grant for land now extant in North Carolina is 
that from the Indian Chief Kilcocanen to George 
Durant, dated March 1, 1661, and now on file in the 
courthouse of Perquimans county. This grant recites 
the fact that, "for a valeiable consideration," and "with 
the consent of my people," Kilcocanen had sold to 



4. C. R., I., 59-67, 

5. Ibid, I., 99. 



English 23 

George Durant "a parcel of land lying and being on 
Roanoke Sound and on a river called by the name of 
Perquimans."*^ Thus more than twenty years before 
William Penn's celebrated treaty, George Durant pur- 
chased for a valuable consideration the lands which he 
might have seized by force and laid the foundations of 
North Carolina in peace and goodwill rather than in 
bloodshed and hatred. 

From Albemarle population moved slowly south- 
ward. The stages of its progress may be marked by 
the four principal river systems of Eastern Carolina — 
the Roanoke, the Pamlico, the Neuse, and the Cape 
Pear. JSTo definite record of the progress of the settle- 
ments is found until they reached Pamlico River, 
where in 1691 a small party of French Huguenots 
from Virginia planted a colony. A few years later a 
pestilence among the Indians opened the way for other 
settlers, who continued to drift southward from Albe- 
marle. By 1696 the settlement was considered of suffi- 
cient importance to be erected into a county called 
Archdale, afterwards Bath, extending from the Albe- 
marle to the Neuse, and to be allowed two representa- 
tives in the General Assembly. In 1704 a site for a 
town was selected, and the next year the town was 
incorporated under the name of Bath. At the close of 
its first five years Bath could boast of a public library 
and a dozen houses. Though at times the home of 
wealth and culture, Bath never became more than a 
sleepy little village, and derives its chief distinction 
from the unimportant fact that it was the first town 
in the province. The settlers on the Pamlico, however, 
prospered and their good reports induced others to 

6. C. R., I., 19. 



24 Race Elements of North Carolina 

join them. Two years after tlie founding o£ Bath, 
another body of Huguenots from Virginia, "consider- 
able in numbers," passed the Pamlico and occupied 
lands on the Neuse and Trent rivers. Here in 1710 
they were joined by a colony of German palatines, 
who had been driven from their native land on account 
of their religious faith. 

The settlements on the Pamlico and the iN'euse do 
not concern us here since they were not made by an 
English-speaking people. They were rather a small 
wedge of foreign population driven in between the two 
English settlements which during the early history of 
North Carolina controlled and dominated the aifairs 
of the colony, — viz : the settlement on the Albemarle 
and the settlement on the Cape Fear. x\n attempt had 
been made to plant an English colony on the Cape 
Fear River as early as 1665, but after two years of 
hardship the settlement was abandoned. Thereafter 
the Cape Fear section fell into disrepute, and more 
than half a century passed before another attempt 
was made to plant a settlement there. Four causes 
contributed to this delay: first, the dangerous charac- 
ter of the coast ; second, the hostility of the Cape Fear 
Indians; third, the pirates who sought refuge in large 
numbers behind the sand bars at the mouth of the 
Cape Fear River; and finally an order of the Lords 
Proprietors forbidding settlers to take up lands in 
that section. 

The character of the coast, of course, could not be 
changed, and to this day, in spite of all that modern 
engineering skill can do, remains a serious obstacle 
to the development of a splendid section. The Cape 
Fear Indians "were reckoned the most barbarous of 
any in the colony," and stood for many years a menac- 



English 25 

ing barrier to those who cast longing eyes upon the 
fertile lands along the Cape Fear River and its tribu- 
taries. But finally in 1715 their power was broken 
and they were overthrown. Three years later through 
the exertions of the Governor of South Carolina the 
last of the pirates, after a desperate battle, was cap- 
tured, carried to Charleston, and hanged at "the tail 
of ae tow." 

But the struggles of the Carolina settlers with the 
forces of nature, the savages of the wilderness, and the 
freebooters of the sea, to recover this splendid region 
for civilization, were to avail nothing if they were to 
yield obedience to the orders of the Lords Proprietors. 
Fortunately, there were men in ISTorth Carolina who 
would not consent for a few wealthy landowners be- 
yond the sea to prevent their clearing and settling this 
inviting region in the name of civilization, and about 
the year 1723 the ring of their axes began to break the 
long silence of the Cape Fear. They laid off their 
claims, cleared their fields, and built their cabins with- 
out regard to the formalities of law, and when the 
colonial authorities saw that the people were deter- 
mined to take up land without either acquiring titles 
or paying rents, they decided that their own interests 
would be served by giving the one and receiving the 
other. 

Accordingly the orders were rescinded, and good 
titles thus assured, settlers were not wanting. Governor 
Burrington himself, Maurice Moore and his brother 
Roger, led the way, followed by the Moseleys, the 
Howes, the Porters, the Lillingtons, the Ashes, the 
Harnetts, and many others whose names are closely 
identified with the history of North Carolina. On the 
west bank of the Cape Fear, about fourteen miles 



26 Race Elements of North Carolina 

above its moutli, Maurice Moore laid off a town, and 
donated sites for a graveyard, a cliureh, a courthouse, a 
markethouse, and other public buildings, and a com- 
mons "for the use of the inhabitants of the town." 
With an eye to royal favor he named the place Bruns- 
wick, in honor of the reigning family of Great Britain. 
But Burnswick, like Bath, did not flourish, and in the 
course of a few years after a strenuous and stormy 
struggle for existence, it yielded with no good grace to 
a younger and more vigorous rival sixteen miles 
farther up the river, which had been named in honor 
of Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington. The popu- 
lation of the Cape Fear settlement increased rapidly, 
and by the close of the first decade a number of fine 
estates were scattered up and down the banks of the 
Cape Fear and its tributaries. Large tracts of forest 
lands had been converted into beautiful meadows and 
cultivated plantations ; comfortable, if not elegant farm 
houses dotted the river banks; and two towns had 
sprung into existence. The forest offered tribute to 
the lumberman and the turpentine distiller ; a number 
of sawmills had been erected; many of the planters 
were engaged in the production of lumber and naval 
stores; and a brisk trade had been established with the 
other colonies and even with the mother country. 
When the settlement was less than ten years old, Gov- 
ernor Johnston declared that the inhabitants were a 
"sober and industrious set of people," that they had 
made "an amazing progress in their improvement," 
and that the Cape Fear had become the "place of the 
greatest trade in the whole province."'^ 



7. For a more detailed account of the settlement of the 
Cape Fear see the author's "Cornelius Harnett: An 
Essay in North Carolina History," Ch, I. 



English 27 

As already pointed out most of the settlers on the 
Albemarle and many of those on the Cape Fear came 
from Virginia. But many others came also, attracted 
by the cheap and fertile lands, hailing from South 
Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New 
York, and the New England colonies. From beyond 
the Atlantic came hardy adventurers from England, 
Scotland, and Ireland, as well as from Barbadoes, 
Jamaica, and other islands of the sea. It is not with- 
out interest to note that many of those from England 
hailed from localities whose names are now found 
scattered all over the map of North Carolina. This 
one describes himself as "late of Southwark Parish in 
the County of Surry;" that one is from Dover in ye 
County of Kent;" another is "from Halifax, in ye 
County of York;" while still another tells us that he 
was "late of Droughton near Skipton in Craven in the 
County of York in Great Britain."^ During the first 
three quarters of a century, i. e., 1660-1730, the popu- 
lation of North Carolina, with the unimportant excep- 
tions of a few French on the Pamlico and a few Ger- 
mans on the Neuse, was almost entirely English. It was 
these English settlers then who led the way into the 
Carolina wilderness, drove back the forces of barbar- 
ism, and laid the foundations of the Commonwealth. 

Historians do not agree in their delineation of the 
character of these founders of our State and civiliza- 
tion. There are those, of whom perhaps George Davis, 
the historian of the Cape Fear, was the most eminent, 
who would have us believe that the settlers of the 
colony "were no needy adventurers, driven by neces- 



8. For further illustrations see Grimes, J. Bryan (editor) : 
Abstracts of North Carolina Wills. 



28 Race Elements of North Carolina 

sity — no unlettered boors, ill at ease in the haunts of 
civilization, and seeking their proper sphere amidst the 
barbarism of the savage," but that 'they were gentle- 
men of birth and education, bred in the refinements 
of polished society, and bringing with them ample for- 
tunes, gentle manners, and cultivated minds."^ On 
the other hand there are William Byrd, John Fiske, 
and others of their school who could see in Colonial 
North Carolina nothing more than "a kiiid of back- 
woods for Virginia," "an Alsatia for insolvent 
debtors," "mean white trash," and "outlaws," from the 
northern colony. John Fiske divided the early settlers 
of North Carolina into two classes : first, the thrift- 
less, improvident white servant class who could not 
maintain a respectable existence for themselves in Vir- 
ginia; second, the "outlaws who fled [from Virginia] 
into North Carolina to escape the hangman. "^^ 
Neither picture is true, for if Davis insists that the 
shield is all gold, none the less does Fiske insist that it 
is all of a baser metal. The truth lies between. Un- 
doubtedly there were enough well-born educated lead- 
ers among the population to give a cultured atmos- 
phere to the best society in the colony; and undoubt- 
edly there were also enough escaped outlaws to keep 
the officers of the criminal law ever vigilant. But 
both together constituted no larger percentage of the 
population of North Carolina than of the other colonies 
and in none of them were they more than a very small 
minority. Between the two extremes, constituting then 
as now the bone and sinew of the population, were 
those sturdy, enterprising, law-abiding, and deeply 



9. University Address, 1855. 
10. Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, II, 316. 



English 29 

moral middle-class Englishmen who have always from 
Crecy and Agincourt to Yorktown and Gettysburg 
formed the strength and character of English-speaking 
nations. 

The best contemporary account of the social and in- 
dustrial life of the colony during the first seventy-five 
years of its existence is that found in Brickell's "Nat- 
ural History of North Carolina," published in 1737.1 ^ 
The author was a physician and scientist of marked 
ability whose residence for several years in the colony 
gave him ample opportunity for observation. Says he : 
"The Europeans or Christians of North Carolina are 
a straight, well-limbed and active people .... 
The men who frequent the woods, and labour out of 
doors, or use the waters, the vicinity of the sun makes 
impressions on them ; but as for the women who do not 
expose themselves to the weather, they are often very 
fair, and well-featured, as you shall meet with any- 
where, and have very brisk and charming eyes; and 
as well and finely shaped as any women in the world. 
. . . . The children . . . are very docile and 
apt to learn anything as any children in Europe, and 
those that have the advantage to be educated write 
good hands and prove good accountants . . . The 
young men are generally of a bashful, sober behaviour, 
few proving prodigals, to spend what the parents with 
care and industry have left them, but commonly im- 
prove it . . . The girls are not only bred to the 
needle and spinning, but to the dairy and domestic 
affairs, which many of them manage with a great deal 
of prudence and conduct, though they are very young. 



11. References are to Grimes' edition published by the 
Board of Trustees of the State Library, 1910. 



30 Race Elements of North Carolina 

. . . Both sexes are very dextrous in paddling and 
managing their canoes, both men, women, boys, and 
girls, being bred to it from infancy. . . . The 
men are very ingenious in several handicraft businesses, 
and in building their canoes and houses. . . . 
There are throughout this settlement as good bricks 
as any I ever met with in Europe. All sorts of handi- 
crafts, such as carpenters, coopers, bricklayers, plaster- 
ers, shoemakers, tanners, tailors, weavers, and most 
other sorts of tradesmen, may with small beginnings, 
and good industry, soon thrive well in this place and 
provide good estates and all manner of necessaries for 
their families. . . . Their furniture, as with us, 
consists of pewter, brass, tables, chairs, which are im- 
ported here commonly from England. The better sort 
have tolerable quantities of plate, with other conven- 
ient, ornamental and valuable furniture." 

Land and slaves were then, as they continued to be 
throughout the South until 1865, the chief form of 
wealth in North Carolina. Consequently the growth 
of towns was very slow and life in the colony was seen 
at its best on the great estates of the planters scattered 
along the banks of the rivers and their tributaries. 
Many of these planters counted from five to ten thous- 
and acres in their estates, while not a few were lords 
of princely domains embracing from fifty to seventy- 
five thousand acres, and were masters of as many as 
two hundred and fifty slaves. The river courses af- 
forded the best sites for plantations not only because 
of the greater fertility of the bottom lands, but also 
because transportation was carried on chiefly by water. 
At the planter's wharf sloops, schooners, and brigan- 
tines were loaded with cargoes of skins, salt pork and 
beef, tallow, staves, naval stores, lumber, tobacco, rice, 



English 31 

and other produce of the plantation to he carried away 
to the West Indies and exchanged for rum, molasses, 
sugar and coffee, or to Boston where the proceeds were 
invested in clothing, household furniture, books and 
negroes. 

On an elevated site overlooking the river and gener- 
ally approached through a long avenue of oaks or 
cedars, was the "Manor House," or as the negroes 
called it the "Big House." As a rule these mansions 
were wooden buildings without any pretense to archi- 
tectural beauty, though a few of the wealthier planters, 
during the years preceding the Eevolution, erected 
brick structures after the style now known as "colon- 
ial." These colonial residences were characterized by 
huge white columns, broad verandas, wide halls, large 
and spacious rooms. Whether of wood or brick all 
were the seats of unbounded hospitality. "The plant- 
ers," says Brickell, "[are] the most hospitable people 
that are to be met with," while John Lawson, who 
wrote nearly thirty years earlier than Brickell, tells 
us that "the planters [are] hospitable to all that come 
to visit them; there being very few housekeepers but 
what live very nobly and give away more provisions 
to coasters and guests who come to see them than they 
expend among their own families." Hospitality to 
strangers and travelers was regarded as a patriotic 
duty which the wealthy planters, owing to the absence 
of inns and comfortable taverns, felt impelled to exer- 
cise for the honor of the province. Indeed, in their 
isolated situation, a garrulous traveler or a genial 
sea-captain who brought news of the outside world, was 
ever an honored and a welcome guest, for whom the 
housekeeper brought out her finest silver and china 
ware, her best linen and her most tempting morsels, 



32 Race Elements of North Carolina 

while the planters regaled him with the choicest liquid 
refreshments which his cellar afforded, for as Brickell 
assures us, "the better sort, or those of good economy" 
kept "plenty of wine, rum, and other liquors at their 
own houses, which they generally make use of amongst 
their friends and acquaintances, after a most decent 
and discreet manner." 

Every great plantation was almost a complete com- 
munity in itself. Each had its own shops, mills, dis- 
tillery, tannery, spinning wheels and looms, and among 
the slaves were to be found excellent blacksmiths, car- 
penters, millers, shoemakers, spinners, and weavers, 
and other artisans. "The clothing used by men," 
Brickell tells us, "are English cloaths, druggets, durois, 
green linen, etc. The women have their silks, calicoes, 
stamp-linen, calimanchoes, and all kinds of stuffs some 
whereof are manufactured in the Province. They 
make few hats, though they have the best furs in 
plenty, but with this article, they are commonly sup- 
plied from New England, and sometimes from 
Europe." In their homes the planters and their fami- 
lies were supplied not only with all the necessities of a 
pioneer community, but enjoyed many of the comforts 
and luxuries usually found only in a long established 
society. 

An examination of their wills, inventories, and other 
documents shows among their household furniture an 
ample supply of those fine old mahogany tables, bed- 
steads, couches, chairs, and desks which excite the envy 
of modern housekeepers and deplete the purses of 
modern husbands. That the Carolina housekeeper was 
prepared at any time to play the hospitable hostess to 
the most particular guest or the most pompous colonial 
potentate who might chance to honor her board, is 



English 33 

well attested by the excellent silver, china, and glass- 
ware which adorned her sideboard. The diamond 
rings, earrings, necklaces, and other jewelry which the 
colonial dame passed down as heirlooms to her chil- 
dren and grandchildren show clearly enough from 
whom the twentieth century dame inherited her love of 
finery and personal ornaments; while a goodly sprinkl- 
ing of silver and gold kneebuckles, shoebuckles, and 
other such trinkets betrays the vanity with which the 
colonial planter displayed his silk-stockinged calf and 
shapely foot.i^ 

Though there were practically no schools in the pro- 
vince it would be a gross error to infer from that fact 
that the planters were either ignorant or illiterate 
themselves or indifferent to the education of their 
children. In infancy the children were taught at 
home, but for their higher education they were sent to 
Virginia, New England, and to" the universities of 
Scotland and England. "My principle desire," de- 
clared Wyriot Ormond, in his will, "is that of the 
education of my daughters . . . and that no ex- 
pense be thought too great." William Standin desired 
that his son be taught "to read, rite and cifer as far 
as the rule of three." Stephen Lee directed that his 
son should be educated either in Philadelphia or Bos- 
ton, while John Skinner provided for the education of 
his son in North Carolina, "or other parts." Edward 
Moseley directed that his sons should be sent elsewhere 
when it became necessary to give them "other educa- 
tion that is to be had from the Common Masters in 
this Province, for," he declared, "I would have my 



12. See Grimes (editor): Abstracts of North Carolina 
Wills and also his North Carolina Wills and Inven- 
tories. 
3 



34 Race Elements of JSTorth Carolina 

children well educated," These quotations from the 
wills of the period are typical and might be continued 
almost indefinitely. 

Not so common, however, were such provisions as 
that found in the will of John Baptista Ashe, in 1734, 
which would do credi^ to the most modern professor of 
pedagogy. "I will," said he, "that my slaves be kept 
at work on my lands and that my estate be managed 
to the best advantage so as my sons m.ay have as 
liberal an education as the profits thereof will af- 
ford; and in their education I pray my executors 
to observe this method: Let them be taught to 
read and write and be introduced into the practical 
part of Arithmetick, not too hastily hurrying them to 
Latin or Grammar; but after they are pretty well 
versed in these, let them be taught Latin and Greek, I 
propose this may be done in Virginia; after which let 
them learn French; perhaps some Frenchman at San- 
tee will undertake this. When they are arrived to 
years of discretion let them study the Mathematicks, 
To my sons when they arrive at age I recommend the 
pursuit and study of some profession or business (I 
could wish the one to ye Law, the other to Merchan- 
dize), in which let them follow their own inclinations. 
I will that my daughter be taught to write and read 
and some feminine accomplishment which may render 
her agreeable; and that she be not kept ignorant of 
what appertains to a good housewife in the manage- 
ment of household affairs." ^^ 

There were of course no free public schools in the 
province and while the planters as a rule provided only 



13. Grimes (editor) : North Carolina Wills and Inven- 
tories, 16-17. 



English 35 

for tlie education of those of their own households, it 
was not an unknown thing for one to devote his wealth 
to the education of the less fortunate. Thus as early as 
1710 John Bennett, of Currituck county, left a portion 
of his estate for the use of "poor old men and women 
who have heen honest and laborious," and another por- 
tion to "be for ye use & benefit of poor children to 
pay for their schooling." i* Better known is the 
benefaction of James Winright, of Carteret county, 
who in 1744 set aside the rents and profits of his lands 
and houses in Beaufort "for the encouragement of a 
sober discreet Qualified Man to teach school at Least 
Reading, Writing, Vulgar and Decimal Arithmetick 
in the aforesaid town of Beaufort." ^^ Other evidences 
of the education, culture and intelligence of the planters 
are found in the books they read. Edward Moseley, as 
is well known, established a free public library at Bath 
in 1728, to which he donated £100 for the purchase of 
books, most of which were in the Latin, Greek, and 
HebreAv languages; while at his death he devised more 
than four hundred volumes then in his private library.i^ 
In the home of nearly every planter a few good books 
were to be found, generally treatises on theology, moral 
philosophy, law, history, and medicine. Among them 
were the works of Sir Edward Coke, John Bunyan, 
Increase Mathers, Bichard Blome, Archbishop Tillot- 
son, and other jurists, preachers, and theologians fa- 
mous in their day and generation.!"^ 

If further evidence is needed of the character and 
social standing of the planters of colonial Carolina it 



14. Grimes (editor): North Carolina Wills and Inventories 

16-17. 

15. Ibid, 455. 

16. Ibid, 313. 

17. See especially the inventories printed in Grimes' Wills 

and Inventories, p. 469 et seq. 



36 Kace Elements of North Carolina 

is found in the general application to them of the term 
"gentleman," then used as a class distinction, and in 
their general use of such insignia as family crests and 
coats-of-arms. Says a scholarly Virginia historian: 
"There is no reason to think that armorial bearings 
were as freely and loosely assumed in those early times 
as they are so often now, under Republican institu- 
tions; such bearings were then a right of property, as 
clearly defined as any other, and continue to be in 
modern England, what they were in colonial Virginia. 
In the seventeenth century, when so large a proportion 
of the persons occupying the highest position in the 
society of the Colony were natives of England, the un- 
warranted assumption of a coat-of-arms would proba- 
bly have been as soon noticed, and perhaps as quickly 
resented, as in England itself. The prominent families 
in Virginia were as well acquainted with the social 
antecedents of each other in the Mother Country as 
families of the same rank in England were with the 
social antecedents of the leading families in the sur- 
rounding shires; they were, therefore, thoroughly com- 
petent to pass upon a claim of this nature; and the 
fact that they were, must have had a distinct influence 
in preventing a false claim from being put forward. 
In a general way, it may be said it was quite as natural 
for Virginians of those times to be as slow and care- 
ful as contemporary Englishmen in advancing a claim 
of this kind without a legal right on which to base it, 
and, therefore, when they did advance it, that it was 
likely to stand the test of examination by the numerous 
persons in the colony who must have been familiar 
with English coats-of-arms, in general. . . . The 
possession of coats-of-arms by the leading Virginian 
families in the seventeenth century is disclosed in va- 



English 37 

rioiis incidental ways. Insignia of this kind are fre- 
quently included among the personal property ap- 
praised in inventories. And they were also stampt on 
pieces of fine silver plate." !» A more frequent use 
was as seals for letters and valuable papers. What 
Mr. Bruce says of coats-of-arms in Virginia applies 
with equal force in North Carolina. The great colo- 
nial families invariably sealed valuable papers with 
seals bearing impression of their coats-of-arms.^^ They 
prided themselves on their gentle blood and were ex- 
tremely solicitous of the social position and dignity of 
their families. They were men of culture and refine- 
ment, thoroughly imbued with the political doctrines 
of Hampden, Pym, and Eliot ; and in the wild woods 
of Carolina they became the political leaders of the 
people, developing in their early struggles for self-gov- 
ernment such leaders as George Durant, Thomas Pol- 
lock, Edward Moseley, and Samuel Swann, the fore- 
runners of the Harveys, the Harnetts, the Ashes, and 
the Caswells of the Revolution. 

The most important contributions made to our his- 
tory and civilization by the English settlers in l^^orth 
Carolina were political. To them we owe the form and 
character of our government, and those great principles 
of constitutional liberty upon which depend our peace, 
prosperity, and happiness. They demanded that the 
fundamental principles of the British Constitution in 
its full vigor should follow them into their new home, 
and they insisted that their charters should guaran- 
tee to them "all liberties, franchises and privileges" en- 
joyed by their fellow subjects in England. Without 



18. Bruce: Social Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Cen- 

19. SerGrimes' Abstract of North Carolina Wills, passim. 



38 Race Elements of North Carolina 

this guarantee we may be sure they would not have 
stirred an inch from the coast of Britain, and to it we 
owe all those safe-guards of our liberty, — representa- 
tive government, the right of trial by jury, the privi- 
lege of the writ of habeas corpus, the principle that 
taxation without representation is tyranny, and all 
those other great constitutional principles which have 
for centuries characterized the governments of English- 
speaking peoples. But though these principles were 
guaranteed by their charters the people of North Caro- 
lina were not permitted to enjoy them without a 
struggle. 

In 1663, you will remember, the King granted Caro- 
lina to eight Lords Proprietors upon whom he con- 
ferred power to institute a government. ^^ Under this 
government the laws of the province were made by an 
Assembly chosen by the people, but they were adminis- 
tered by governors appointed by the Proprietors with- 
out the consent of the people. The Proprietors were 
not always fortunate in their selection of the governors. 
Some were weak, some bad men, and but few cared 
anything for the people over whom they were sent to 
rule. Indeed they were not the people's governors; 
they were the Proprietors' agents, and their first duty 
was to look out for the interests of their masters ; when 
these interests conflicted with the welfare of the people,, 
the latter and not the former was made to suffer. Fre- 
quently, too, the governors were men of small abilities, 
puffed up with their importance, and inclined to run 
things with a high hand. The result of course was 
continual clashing between the people and their rulers. 



20. For the charters of 1663 and 1665 see Colonial Records 
of North Carolina, I, 20 and 102. 



English 39 

The former considering themselves entitled, hy the 
terms of their charters, to "all the liberties, privileges 
and franchises" possessed by the people of England, 
and being too high-spirited to submit to the tyranny 
and insolence of the latter, more than once rose in 
revolt in defense of their liberties. Six Governors — 
Jenkins, Miller, Eastchurch, Sothel, Gary and Glover, — 
each in his turn, were either driven out or kept out of 
office by dominant factions of the irate people, who 
refused to see the charters of their liberties trampled 
under the feet of petty provincial officials. Indeed, in 
1711 Governor Spotswood of Virginia declared that the 
people of Carolina were so used to turning their gov- 
ernors out of office that they had come to think they 
had a right to do so. Three times, too, with arms in 
their hands the stern, liberty-loving English farmers 
of Carolina rose in rebellion against violations of their 
constitutional rights : in the Culpepper Rebellion they 
resisted the enforcement of the navigation laws which 
they believed unconstitutionally interferred with their 
trade; in the Cary Rebellion they resisted the imposi- 
tion of an oath of office which limited the right to sit 
in the Colonial Assembly to members of the Church of 
England because it restricted their political and re- 
ligious freedom; in the Rent Riots they resisted the 
collection of illegal rents. 

Historians taking a superficial view of these strug- 
gles and contests in the history of colonial Carolina 
have condemned those early Carolinians as a lawless 
and contentious people; but those who pronounce this 
judgment little understand the spirit which actuated 
them. When governed according to the terms of its 
charter no colony on the continent was more orderly 
or more law-abiding ; on the other hand no people were 



40 Race Elements of North Carolina 

ever more jealous of their coustitutioual rights or 
quicker to resent the encroachments of power. Adher- 
ence to their charter and resistance to its perversion 
were cardinal principles with North Carolinians 
throughout their colonial history; and their records 
are full of assertions of those principles on which the 
American Revolution was fought. As early as 1678 
"when a few families were struggling into a conscious- 
ness of statehood along the wide waters of our eastern 
sounds," they declared that "the doctrine of non- 
resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is 
absurd, slavish and destructive to the good and happi- 
ness of mankind." In 1716 when the colony was but 
fifty years old and the population all told was less than 
ten thousand souls, the Assembly entered on its journal 
the declaration "that the impressing of the inhabitants, 
or their property, under pretence of its being for pub- 
lic service, without authority from the Assembly, was 
unwarrantable and a great infringement upon the 
liberty of the subject." Governor Burrington who 
spoke from the experience of ten years of residence 
among them wrote that the early Carolinians were 
"subtle and crafty to admiration." "The people," he 
declared, "are neither to be cajoled or outwitted; 
whenever a governor attempts to effect anything by 
these means he will lose his labour and show his ignor- 
ance. . . . They insist that no public money can 
or ought to be paid but by a claim given to and allowed 
by the house of burgesses." And John Urmstone, a 
missionary among them, declared that the people re- 
spected no authority that did not emanate from them- 
selves. In a word, as Dr. Alderman has said : "The 
key to North Carolina character in this inchoate period 
is the subordination of everything — material prosper- 



English 41 

ity, personal ease, financial development, — to tlie re- 
morseless assertion of the sacredness of chartered 
rights" against the encroachments of the proprietary- 
government. ^i 

The government of the Lords Proprietors was too 
weak to afford any protection to the people or to pre- 
serve order in the province, yet it was strong enough 
to be a source of constant irritation. When the great 
war with the Indians, which nearly destroyed the 
colony at a single blow, broke out in September 1711, 
and when the pirates on the coast became so numerous, 
so daring and so insolent as to threaten the colony 
with ruin, it was not to the Lords Proprietors that the 
people looked for aid, but to their sister colony of 
South Carolina : nor did the Proprietors offer any as- 
sistance or protection. Yet the danger once past, and 
peace restored, the hands of these rapacious overlords 
fell heavily upon the exhausted resources of the prov- 
ince. The people of course were extremely restive 
under a system which exacted much and yielded noth- 
ing, and the result was that neither they nor the Lords 
Proprietors were satisfied with the experiment. Then, 
too. King George regretted the prodigality with which 
King Charles had given away such vast possessions 
and conferred such extensive political power upon his 
subjects. After sixty-five years of experimenting, 
therefore, all parties were eager for a change, and 
when the King in 1728, proposed to purchase the rights 
of the Lords Proprietors, the suggestion found a hearty 
welcome from both rulers and subjects. By this pur- 
chase N^orth Carolina passed under the direct authority 
of the Crown and the rule of the Lords Proprietors 

21. William Hooper, p. 13. 



42 Eace Elements of JS^orth Carolina 

came to an end. In JN^orth Carolina the change was 
celebrated with great public rejoicings. 

The people had cause for their joy. Neglected by 
their rulers in time of danger, and nursed too atten- 
tively in time of peace and safety, what those early 
Carolinians had obtained they got through their own 
unassisted efforts and without favor from anybody. 
IN'one of the colonies had passed through a more des- 
perate struggle for existence, and none had had a more 
severe test of character and capacity. And can we 
not say too with all truth that none had borne the test 
better? What a gloomy picture of the condition of 
the people do we gather from the literature of the 
period immediately following the great Indian War 
of 1711-1715. The people have "scarcely corn to last 
them until wheat time, many not having any at all;" 
"the country miserably reduced by Indian cruelty;" 
"the inhabitants brought to so low an ebb that large 
numbers fled the province," "a country preserved which 
everybody that was but the least acquainted with our 
situation gave over for lost," — these are typical ex- 
pressions with which the letters of the period abound. 
That the colony survived these conditions is better 
evidence of the character and spirit of the people than 
the sneers and jibes of hostile critics, either contem- 
porary or modern. Had the greater part of the popu- 
lation of North Carolina, or even a considerable minor- 
ity of it, been composed of "the shiftless people who 
could not make a place for themselves in Virginia so- 
ciety," or "outlaws who fled [from Virginia] to escape 
the hangman," all the aristocracy of Virginia and 
South Carolina combined could not have saved the 
colony from anarchy and ruin. Yet between the years 
1663 and 1728 somebody laid here in North Carolina 



English 43 

the foundation of a great State. The foundation upon 
which great states are built is the character of their 
people, and the "mean whites" of Virginia are not now, 
nor were they then, the sort of people who found and 
build states. No colony composed to any extent of 
such a people could have rallied from such disasters as 
those from which ITorth Carolina rallied between 1718 
and 1728. Those years were years of growth and ex- 
pansion. The population increased threefold; the 
Cape Fear was opened to settlers; new plantations 
were cleared; better methods of husbandry introduced; 
mills were erected ; roads surveyed ; ferries established ; 
trade was increased; towns were incorporated; better 
houses built; better furniture installed; parishes were 
created; churches erected; ministers supplied; the 
schoolmaster found his way thither; and the colony 
was fairly started on that course of development which 
brought it by the outbreak of the Revolution to the 
rank of fourth in population and importance among 
the thirteen English-speaking colonies in America. 



Ill 

The Highland-Scotch in North Carohna 

A range of mountains beginning in the county of 
Aberdeen and running in a southwesterly direction, 
divides Scotland into two distinct parts. The part ly- 
ing to the south of the range is called the Lowlands; 
that to the north, the Highlands. The coastline of the 
Highlands is broken by long arms of the sea and bor- 
dered with groups of islands. The surface of the coun- 
try, as its name implies, is mountainous. There is 
found some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. 
Tall rugged mountain peaks lifting their bare heads 
above soft green valleys, and sparkling streams hurry- 
ing to mingle their cool waters with the waters of in- 
numerable glassy lakes, give a variety to the view that 
is never tiresome. Poets and musicians have cele- 
brated the glories of the Highland in song and verse; 
and thousands of tourists, from the four corners of 
the world, annually pay tribute to its charm. 

The Highlanders themselves are no less interesting 
than their country. Shut off for many ages from com- 
munication with the outside world by the rugged face 
of their mountains on the one side, and by their bold, 
rocky, and stormy coast on the other, they lived for 
one generation after another a life peculiar to them- 
selves. The Highlanders knew but little of the Low- 
landers, whom they thoroughly despised ; and the Low- 
landers knew but little of the Highlanders, whom they 
thoroughly feared. The former lived an outdoor life 
and engaged in occupations which required strength 
and courage and activity of mind and body. Following 
the chase over pathless mountains, waging constant 



Highland Scotch 45 

war with their neighbors, and raiding the rich plains 
of the Lowlands were their principal pursuits. In this 
state of existence there was no place for the coward or 
the sluggard. Hardships and dangers were their daily 
portions, while the comforts, the luxuries, and the 
pleasures of civilized society were associated in their 
minds with cowardice and effeminacy. A natural con- 
sequence of this kind of life and these ideals was an 
enthusiastic admiration for physical beauty, strength 
and courage. As among all barbarous or semi-civilized 
people the weak and the puny perished ; only the strong 
and the vigorous survived. 

Legally and nominally the Highlanders were sub- 
jects of the King of Scotland, but in reality they paid 
to the royal authority such respect and yielded to it 
such obedience as suited their fancy. That loyalty 
which the people of other countries gave to their na- 
tion and to their king, the Highlanders gave to their 
clans and to their chiefs. The clan was composed of 
families tracing their descent from the same common 
ancestor, and bearing the same name. To guard the 
safety and the honor of the clan was the first duty of 
the clansman. An insult even to the humblest clans- 
man by a member of another tribe was regarded as an 
insult to the whole clan. It was never forgotten nor 
forgiven, and if not avenged by one generation, it was 
handed down as a precious legacy to the next. Hence 
came that state of continuous warfare which existed in 
the Highlands. 

At the head of each clan stood the chief, with whom 
every member of the clan claimed kinship. It was his 
duty to support his clansmen with his wealth and pro- 
tect them with his power. Although theoretically sub- 
ordinate to the will of the clan, he generally ruled over 



46 Race Elements of North Carolina 

it with "absolute and irresistible sway," and his com- 
mauds were readily obeyed, "not from motives of fear, 
but with the ready alacrity of confidence and affec- 
tion." His clansmen obeyed his voice in their dealings 
with each other; they rallied around him in his feuds 
with neighboring chieftains; they followed his stand- 
ard when he marched away to battle for the king. 
When the chief called his clan to arms, the clansman 
who failed to respond or lingered behind was branded 
with infamy forever. The Highland chief counted his 
wealth by the number of his followers. "How much is 
your income?" an Englishman once asked the chief of 
the MacDonalds. "I can raise five hundred men," was 
the proud chief's laconic reply. The chief's pride in 
his clan was equaled only by the clansman's devotion 
to the person of his chief. For the safety, glory and 
honor of his chief the true Highlander ever stood ready 
to sacrifice all that he possessed. His own life he 
counted as a worthless trifle when weighed in the 
balance with that of his hereditary chieftain. Especial 
emphasis is laid upon these facts because they were 
the origin of the most striking and one of the most 
admirable characteristics of the Highlander, — his un- 
failing loyalty to his chief, his clan, and his cause. 

To the isolation of their mountain homes and the 
peculiarity of their social organization, we may add a 
third potent influence which tended to keep the High- 
landers a race apart, — their peculiar costume. The 
Highlander's costume, as you well know, was as pic- 
turesque as his native hills. In a general way it con- 
sisted of a short coat, a vest, and a kilt, or "philabeg," 
which is a kind of petticoat reaching not quite to the 
knees. The knees themselves were left bare, but the 
lower part of the leg was covered with a short hose. A 



Highland Scotch 47 

belt encircled the waist and from it hung the "sporan," 
or pocket-purse, made of the skin of a goat or of a 
badger with the fur left on it. From the left shoulder, 
fastened by a brooch, hung the plaid or scarf, a piece 
of tartan two yards in breadth and four in length. 
The right, or sword arm, was left uncovered and at full 
liberty, and when both arms were needed the plaid was 
fastened across the breast by a large bodkin or brooch. 
In wet weather it was thrown loose so as to cover both 
the shoulders and the body. Each clan had a plaid of 
its own, differing in the combination of its colors from 
all others, so that a Campbell, or a MacDonald, or a 
MacLean could be known by his plaid. The costume 
was well adapted to the Highlander's mode of life.^ Its 
lightness and freedom permitted him to use his limbs 
and handle his arms with perfect ease. His arms, too, 
it may be said, formed part of his costume, for the 
Highlander was never without them. His weapons 
were a broad-sword, or "claymore," a dirk, and his 
trusty rifle. Before the introduction of fire-arms he 
wore a round shield on his left arm. The claymore 
had a long straight blade, a basket hilt, and was worn 
on the left side attached to a broad band which passed 
over the right shoulder. The dirk was a stouter and 
shorter weapon, intended for use in close quarters, and 
was worn on the right side. The sheath of the dirk 
was also provided with a hunting knife. 

When a chief wished to summon his clansmen upon 
a sudden danger or for a sudden foray, he sent through- 
out his territory the Fiery Cross, or the "Cross of 
Shame." It was made by tying together two pieces of 
lightwood in the form of a cross. The ends of the cross 
were set on fire and after burning a little while, the 
burning ends were dipped in the blood of a goat slam 



48 Race Elements of North Carolina 

for the purpose. The burnt ends signified to the clans- 
men that the homes of all who failed to obey the call 
of the chief would be given to the flames, the blood, 
that he and all his family would be put to the sword. 
It was sometimes called the "Cross of Shame," be- 
cause disgrace forever followed the clansman who 
failed or even hesitated to obey its message. The mak- 
ing of the cross was accomplished by elaborate cere- 
monies, which closed when the old gray seer, or priest 
of the clan, uttered his curse against 

. . . "the wretch who fails to rear 

At this dread sign the ready spear. 
Tor, as the flames this symbol sear. 
His home — the refuge of his fear — 

A kindred fate shall know; 
Far o'er its roof the volumed flame 
Clan-Alpine's vengeance shall proclaim, 
While maids and matrons on his name 
Shall call down wretchedness and shame. 

And infamy and woe." 

A swift and trusty messenger then snatched the 
"dread sign" from the feeble hands of the seer, dashed 
away over the mountains and across the streams, show- 
ing it to every clansman, naming the time and the 
meeting-place. At the sight of the Fiery Cross every 
man in the clan must instantly snatch his weapons and 
hasten with all the speed possible to obey the call of 
his chief. N^o excuse answered for delay: the son must 
leave his dying father; the bridegroom his weeping 
bride, for before all other duties came the duty to the 
clan and loyalty to the chief. One messenger after 
another took charge of the fatal sign, until with great 
speed it had gone througliout the territory of the clan. 



Highland Scotch 49 

In war the chief led his clansmen in person. Every 
clan had its battle-cry and its war-song. At the battle 
of Moore's Creek Bridge, where members of several 
clans fought nnder MacDonald, their battle-cry was, 
''King George and broadswords !" His great physical 
strength, his long training, his daring impetuosity, and 
his scorn of death, made the Highlander terrible in 
battle; but his habits of life made him a poor soldier 
for an extended campaign. When a battle was over, 
the campaign, in his opinion, was ended ; if it was 
lost, he sought safety in his mountains; if won, he re- 
turned thither to secure his booty. In either case he 
was ready to go home, and this habit often rendered 
the most complete victory fruitless, and made the 
Highlander a troublesome ally on an extended cam- 
paign; the general never knew when he might sud- 
denly find himself without an army. 

Such were the Highlanders in their native country. 
When they came to North Carolina to live they 
brought many of their customs and peculiar habits and 
beliefs with them. Their emigration to this country 
began about the middle of the eighteenth century, and 
from that time until the outbreak of the Revolution 
the flow from the Highlands of Scotland to North 
Carolina continued in an almost unbroken stream. 
There was something very extraordinary about this 
movement, for the Highlander, deeply devoted to his 
own country, seldom stirred abroad and never under- 
took the conquest of foreign territory with a view to 
permanent occupancy. His natural home was in the 
Highlands and his devotion to it was strengthened by 
his intense loyalty to his clan and to his chief. Death 
was much to be preferred to exile and for the true 
Highlander death itself lost half its terrors if he felt 
4 



50 Race Elements of North Carolina 

assured that his body was to rest beneath his native 
sod. It is interesting, therefore, to seek an explanation 
of their remarkable emigration to America during the 
eighteenth century. The explanation is found in two 
closely related causes, both the outgrowth of their 
peculiar industrial and social systems : first, agricul- 
tural conditions in the Highlands; secondly, their 
political misfortunes. 

The structure of Highland society rested upon a 
military basis. In the dealings of one clan with an- 
other "Might made right," and accordingly the impor- 
tance of any clan depended upon the number of armed 
men that it could rally to the standard of its chief. 
The natural result of this system, of course, was that 
the Highlander was trained to the use of the clay- 
more and the dirk rather than the plow and the sickle. 
Tilling and reaping were no proper employment for 
warriors, and agricultural labor fell upon the shoulders 
of the women and the weaklings of the clan. Their 
country, naturally rocky and barren, would yield but a 
meagre support even when in a high state of cultiva- 
tion, but their agriculture was on the most limited 
scale and their fields were cultivated in the simplest 
manner and with the rudest tools. ISTor was their trade 
any better: except the occasional sale of a drove of 
cattle, too frequently driven from the pasture of some 
Lowland laird without so much as a "by your leave," 
they had no trade. It follows of course that there 
were no manufactures and no commerce. That genius 
and energy which the people of other countries had 
learned to devote to the arts and the sciences of peace, 
the Highlanders were still devoting, even as late as the 
eighteenth century, to the arts of war and the chase. 
The inevitable result of this system was that many of 



Highland Scotch 51 

the clans counted more clansmen than their lands 
could possibly support. To add further to the suffer- 
ing caused by these conditions, the British Government, 
after the battle of Culloden in 1746, determined to 
break up the clan system, confiscated the hereditary 
estates of the chiefs, and distributed their lands to 
British soldiers. These new landlords, caring nothing 
for the welfare of the Highlanders, and finding sheep- 
raising more profitable than farming, turned into pas- 
ture-lands thousands of acres which theretofore had 
always been under cultivation. This change, as it re- 
quired fewer people to raise sheep than to cultivate 
the land, inevitably added to the general distress. 
Rents increased, hundreds of families were deprived of 
their means of livelihood, and the complete overthrow 
of their social and industrial systems left them help- 
less. 

The other cause of their emigration to America was 
their political misfortunes. As head of the royal family 
of Scotland, the reigning prince of the House of Stuart 
was regarded by many of the Highland clans as their 
common chief. However much they might quarrel 
among themselves most of the clans owned allegiance to 
the Stuarts and when the members of that unhappy 
family, after years of misrule in England, were finally 
expelled from that kingdom by the long-suffering Eng- 
lish people, they appealed to the loyalty of their High- 
land clans for support in their efforts to regain the 
throne. To such an appeal from their hereditary 
chieftains, whatever their faults and vices might be, the 
Scottish clansmen had but one answer, and for more 
than half a century they clung to the fortunes of the 
fallen Stuarts with a loyalty and devotion deserving of 
a better cause. Their last attempt to recover the throne 



52 Race Elements of iN'oKXH Carolina 

for that unhappy family was made in 1746. In the 
early part of the winter Prince Charles Stuart, the 
"Young Pretender," who had been raised an exile in 
France, landed on the shores of Scotland and called 
upon the Highlanders to join him in an invasion of 
England. The Fiery Cross was dispatched throughout 
the Highlands, the clansmen responded with true High- 
land enthusiasm, and soon every hall and vale in the 
Highlands was resounding with the clash of arms and 
echoing with the popular chorus. 

We'll o'er the water, we'll o'er the sea, 
"We'll o'er the water to Charlie! 

Come weal, come woe, we'll gather and go, 
And live and die wi' Charlie! 

At first the impetus of their enthusiasm swept every- 
thing before them, and Charles Stuart saw visions of a 
crown dangling within his grasp. But from that un- 
speakable calamity the English nation was saved, on 
April 16, 1746, when with great slaughter the High- 
landers were swept from the field of Culloden, and 
Charles Stuart, glad to exchange the royal ermine for 
the petticoat of an Irish waiting maid, was saved from 
the block by the devoted loyalty and romantic daring 
of Flora MacDonald. 

The British Government now determined to visit the 
Highlanders with such severity as to make future re- 
bellion impossible. The authority of the chiefs over 
their clansmen was abolished, their estates were con- 
fiscated, and the carrying of arms and the wearing of 
the tribal costumes were made crimes punishable 
with great severity. An English army under the Duke 
of Cumberland, forever afterwards known in Highland 
history as "Butcher Cumberland," established head- 



Highland Scotch 53 

quarters at the town of Inverness, and from this hase, 
his soldiers fell upon the helpless inhabitants through- 
out the Highlands and laid waste their country for 
miles in every direction. Their cattle were driven away 
or slaughtered ; the mansions of the chiefs and the huts 
of the clansmen were laid in ashes ; captured Highland 
soldiers were put to death with brutal ferocity; women 
and children, without food, without homes, without 
husbands and fathers, wandered helplessly among the 
hills and valleys to die of cold and hunger. It became 
the boast of the English soldiery that neither house 
nor cottage, man nor beast could be found within fifty 
miles of Inverness: all was silence, ruin, and desola- 
tion unparalleled in modern warfare until Sherman 
marched through Georgia. 

Driven from their ancient estates, subjected to the 
wanton insults and cruelties of a brutal soldiery, and 
forbidden to observe the social customs of their ances- 
tors, thousands of the Highlanders turned their eyes 
toward America as their only haven of freedom, pros- 
perity, and happiness. As early as 1729 a few families 
of Highlanders had settled on the Cape Fear River in 
ISTorth Carolina. There they found a genial climate, a 
fertile soil, and a mild and liberal government. Every- 
thing contributed to their happiness and contentment, 
and their letters to friends and relatives in Scotland 
glowed with praise of their new home. Five years 
later, 1734, Gabriel Johnston, a Scotchman inordi- 
nately fond of his countrymen, became governor of the 
colony, and throughout his long administration exerted 
himself to spread the fame of ISTorth Carolina through- 
out the Highlands. Consequently when Weal McN'eal, 
one of the earliest of the Scotch settlers on the Cape 
Fear, visited Scotland in 1739, carrying tidings of the 



54 Race Elements of North Carolina 

new land beyond tlie Atlantic, he found a fertile soil 
in which to sow his seed, and upon his return to N^orth 
Carolina in the autumn, brought a ship-load of 350 
Highlanders. They landed at Wilmington where ac- 
cording to tradition their peculiar costume and out- 
landish language so frightened the town officials that 
they attempted to make the strangers take an oath to 
keep the peace, but from this indignity MclSTeal man- 
aged to save them, and taking his countrymen up the 
river to the Highland settlement, found for them there 
a hearty welcome. At the session of the Assembly in 
February, 1740, Dugal McN"eal and McAllister, pre- 
sented a petition in behalf of these immigrants in 
which they stated "if proper encouragement be given 
them, that they'l invite the rest of their friends and 
acquaintances over;" and the House of Commons 
passed a series of resolutions exempting the petitioners 
from taxation for ten years; appropriating £1,000 for 
their subsistence; exempting all such immigrants, who 
came in companies numbering as many as forty each, 
from taxation for ten years after their arrival ; and 
requesting the governor to use his influence to encour- 
age others to come. The Council, however, deferred 
action on these resolutions till the next Assembly but 
failed then to take them up for consideration.^ The 
action of the House is of interest chiefly as showing 
the favorable attitude of the colony toward these High- 
land-Scotch settlers. On the heels of this liberal action 
came the disaster of CuUoden, the rise in rents, and 
the harsh enactments of the British Parliament, and 
immediately a flow of population from the Highlands 

1. Colonial Records, IV, 489-490. 



Highland Scotch 55 

to the New World set in so strong and steady that the 
refrain of one of the popular songs of the day was, 

"Going to seek a fortune in North Carolina. "^ 

Shipload after shipload of sturdy Highland settlers 
reached the shores of America, and most of them land- 
ing at Charleston and Wilmington found their way to 
their kinsmen on the Cape Fear. Here in a few years 
their settlements were thickly scattered throughout the 
territory now embraced in the counties of Anson, 
Bladen, Cumberland, Harnett, Moore, Richmond, 
Robeson, Sampson, Scotland, and Hoke. With a keen 
appreciation of its commercial advantages they selected 
a point of land at the head of navigation on the Cape 
Fear where they laid out a town, first called Camp- 
bellton, then Cross Creek, and finally Fayetteville. 

The Highlanders continued to pour into North Caro- 
lina right up to the outbreak of the Revolution, but 
as no official record of their numbers was kept it is 
impossible to say how numerous they were. Perhaps, 
however, from reports in the periodicals, letters, and 
other documents of the day, we may arrive at some 
idea of their numerical importance. In 1755 it was 
estimated that there were in Bladen county about 500 
white persons, most of whom were Highlanders, capa- 
ble of bearing arms, from which it is reasonable to 
infer that the total population was not less than 2,500, 
The Scots Magazine, in September 1769, records that 
the ship Molly had recently sailed from Islay filled 
with passengers for North Carolina, and that this was 
the third emigration from that county within six years. 



2. The Gaelic is: 

Dol a ah 'iarruidh an fhortain do North Carolina. 



56 Race Elements of I^orth Carolina 

The same journal in a later issue tells us that between 
April and July, 1770, fifty-four vessels sailed from the 
Western Isles laden with 1,200 Highlanders all bound 
for North Carolina. Two years later the ship Adven- 
ture bore a cargo of 200 emigrants from the High- 
lands to the Cape Fear, and in March of the same 
year Governor Martin wrote to Lord Hillsborough, 
Secretary of State for the Colonies ; "ISTear a thousand 
people have arrived in Cape Fear River from the 
Scottish Isles since the month of J^ovember with a 
view to settling in this province whose prosperity and 
strength will receive great augmentation by the ac- 
cession of such a number of hardy, laborious and 
thrifty people." In 1773 the Courant, another Scot- 
tish paper, declared that 800 people from Skye had 
already engaged a vessel to take them to their kinsmen 
in North Carolina. The ship Jupiter sailed in 1775 
with 200 emigrants bound for the same colony, and as 
late as October of that year, after the Revolution w^as 
well under way. Governor Martin notes the arrival at 
Wilmington of a shipload of 172 Highlanders. From 
1769 to 1775 the Scotch journals mention as many as 
sixteen different emigrations besides "several others." 
Not all of these emigrants came to North Carolina. 
Georgia, New York, Canada, and other colonies re- 
ceived a small share, but "the earliest, largest and most 
important settlement of Highlanders in America, prior 
to the Peace of 1783, was in North Carolina along 
Cape Fear River."^ Governor Martin wrote to the 
King in 1775, that he could raise in this colony an 
array of 3,000 Highlanders, from which it is a reason- 



3. MacLean: The Highlanders in America, p. 102. See also 
Hanna: The Scotch-Irish in America. 



Highland Scotch 57 

able conclusion that at that time the Highland-Scotch 
population of North Carolina was not less than 15,000. 
Several of the clans were represented, but at the out- 
break of the Revolution the MacDonalds so largely pre- 
dominated in numbers and in leadership that the 
campaign of 1776, which ended at Moore's Creek 
Bridge, was spoken of at the time as the "insurrection 
of the Clan MacDonald." 

Though unfortunate economic conditions lay behind 
this Highland emigration, it is not therefore to be 
supposed that those who left their native land to seek 
homes in America belonged to an improvident and 
thriftless class, or that they arrived in Carolina empty- 
handed. Such people, as was pointed out in the lecture 
on the English, are not the kind of people who volun- 
tarily take upon their shoulders the task of conquering 
the wilderness and laying the foundations of great 
states and governments. The Highland emigrants were 
among the most substantial and energetic people of 
Scotland and they left the land of their nativity because 
it did not offer them an outlet for their activities. The 
Scots Magazine in 1771 tells us that a band of 500 of 
these emigrants had recently sailed for America "un- 
der the conduct of a gentleman of wealth and merit, 
whose ancestors had resided in Islay for many cen- 
turies past." Another colony, according to the same 
journal, was composed of "the most wealthy and sub- 
stantial people in Skye," while the Courant, in 1773, 
declared that a colony of nearly 500 emigrants who had 
just sailed were, "the finest set of fellows in the High- 
lands," and that they carried "at least £6,000 sterling 
in ready cash with them." From the single county of 
Sunderland, in 1772 and 1773, about 1,500 emigrants 
sailed for America, who, according to the Courant, 



58 Race Elements of North Carolina 

carried with them an average of £4 sterling to the 
man. "This," says that journal, "amounts to £7,500 
which exceeds a year's rent of the whole county." It 
is not so easy to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion 
as to the financial condition of the Highlanders after 
their arrival in North Carolina. On the whole they 
were poor Avhen compared with their English neigh- 
bors, but their condition was undoubtedly a great 
improvement over what it had been in Scotland. 

From both the Governor and the Assembly as well 
as the people generally, the Highlanders received num- 
erous evidences of welcome to their adopted country. 
As early as 1740 the Governor commissioned several of 
their leading men justices of the peace. In 1758 
Hector McNeill was appointed sheriff of Cumberland 
county, but the services of a sheriff seem not to have 
been greatly in demand, for McNeill's fees for the 
whole year amounted to only ten pounds. By 1754 the 
Highland settlement around Campbellton had grown 
so important that the General Assembly erected it 
into a county which, with curious irony, was called in 
honor of "Butcher Cumberland," and gave it the privi- 
lege of sending two representatives to the Assembly. A 
few years later the Assembly passed an act providing 
for the building of a road from the river Dan on the 
Virginia line through the counties of Guilford, Chat- 
ham and Cumberland to Cross Creek on the Cape Fear, 
and another leading to it from Shallow Ford in Surry 
county. Thus Cross Creek became the trading point 
for all the back country as far inland as the Moravian 
settlement around Salem, and soon grew into one of 
of the principal towns in the province. 

The Highlanders desired to reproduce in Carolina 
the life they had lived in Scotland, but changed condi- 



Highland Scotch 59 

tions, as they soon found, made this impossible. True 
no law made it illegal for the clans to maintain their 
tribal organizations, or forbade the chiefs to exercise 
their hereditary authority, or made it a crime for the 
clansmen to bear arms, or to wear the tartan. But as 
the basis of the clan system was military necessity, in 
the absence of such necessity the system could not 
flourish. In Scotland the clansmen had obeyed their 
chief in return for his protection against hostile neigh- 
bors; in Carolina there were no hostile neighbors. Law 
reigned supreme, and under its benign sway the hum- 
blest clansman was assured of far more effective pro- 
tection of life and property than the most powerful 
chief in the Highlands could possibly have given him. 
As soon as the clan system became unnecessary it be- 
came irksome and irritating, and rapidly disappeared. 
With its passing passed also the meaning, and there- 
fore the usefulness, of the Highland costume, which 
was soon laid aside for the less picturesque but more 
serviceable dress of their English fellow countrymen. 
Their language was destined to a similar fate. When 
preaching in English to the Highlanders at Cross 
Creek in 1756 Hugh McAden found that many of them 
"scarcely knew one word" he spoke. The Gaelic made 
a brave struggle against the all-conquering English 
tongue, but a vain and useless one. Entrenched in an 
impregnable stronghold as the language of all legal, 
social, political and commercial transactions, English 
effected an easy conquest, and the Gaelic speech disap- 
peared as a common medium of expression, surviving 
only among a few ancient fathers who, lingering beyond 
the alloted time, found it a convenient language in 
which to glorify the splendors of the past and bemourn 
the degeneracy of their own day. Under these circum- 



60 Race Elements of ISTorth Carolina 

stances tlie peculiar political and social institutions of 
the Highlanders gave way before those of their adopted 
country, and after the second generation of Highland 
settlers had followed their fathers to the grave nothing 
remained to distinguish their descendants from their 
English countrymen save only their Highland names. 

The Highlanders were peculiarly unfortunate in the 
time at which they came to America. Nothing could 
have been more essential to their welfare than peace 
and quiet, freedom from political agitation and from 
the calamities of war. But for them there seemed to be 
no peace, and in exchanging Scotland for Carolina they 
seemed but to have exchanged the character of their 
troubles. From 1768 to 1771, the period during which 
the greater part of them reached our shores, civil war 
raged in ISTorth Carolina between the colonial govern- 
ment and the Regulators. In this much misunderstood 
event the sympathies of the Highlanders seem to have 
been wholly on the side of law and order, and when 
Governor Tryon marched against the rebels in 1771 a 
company of Highlanders under Captain Earquard 
Campbell fought bravely under his command at Ala- 
mance. 

The outbreak of the Revolution presented to the 
Highlanders a far more momentous question. Should 
they array themselves under the royal standard and 
support the cause of established government, or should 
they again risk all upon the uncertain venture of re- 
bellion and revolution? If we find that the Highland- 
ers, when brought face to face with so important a 
problem, rendered the wrong decision, let us recall 
their recent experience in Scotland and the circum- 
stances under which they emigrated to the Wew World 
before we presume to pronounce judgment. At the 



HiGHLANB Scotch 61 

beginning of the disputes witli the mother country, 
when nobody dreamed of any other action on the part 
of the colonists than the presentation of legal and 
peaceful petitions and protests, the sympathies of the 
Highlanders on the whole were with their fellow colon- 
ists. Hardly had they become settled on the Cape 
Fear when those peaceful waters were disturbed by the 
outbreaks at Brunswick and Wihnington which 
speedily followed the passage of the Stamp Act. It 
was not to be expected of course that the Highlanders 
should take any part in this resistance, but so far as 
they showed any interest at all it was against the Min- 
istry. At Cross Creek Lord Bute, the favorite of 
George III, who was supposed to be the moving spirit 
behind the passage of the Stamp Act, was burned m 
effigy, and a letter written from that place to the pa- 
triots of Wilmington called upon them in the name of 
"dear liberty" to resist any attempt to land the stamps 
in North Carolina. In 1775 and 1776 the Highlanders 
sent Farquard Campbell, Thomas Rutherford Alex- 
ander McKay, and Alexander MacAlister, all good 
Highland names, to represent them in the provincial 
congresses and they also had their committees of 

safety. 

But when they saw that these congresses and com- 
mittees were drifting toward open rebelhon and war, 
they refused to follow. Thereupon the Provincial Con- 
gress appointed a committee made up principally ot 
Highlanders who had long been residents of the colony 
"to confer with the gentlemen who have lately arrived 
from the Highlands in Scotland to settle m this Prov- 
ince and to explain to them the nature of our unhappy 
controversy with Great Britain, and to advise and urge 
them to unite with the other inhabitants of America m 



62 Race Elements of North Carolina 

defense of those rights which they derive from God 
and the Constitution. "^ But this mission was in vain : 
the Highlanders were willing to petition the King and 
Parliament for a redress of their grievances, hut they 
would not take up arms against the Crown ; the truth 
is they had had enough of rehellion in Scotland and 
they showed no inclination to repeat the experiment in 
America. Consequently w^hen the appeal to arms came 
the Highlanders withdrew their support from the Rev- 
olutionary party and indicated to the Governor their 
willingness to support the royal cause. 

The most influential of the Highland leaders was 
Allan MacDonald, husband of the famous Flora Mac- 
Donald, a man of great dignity, stately hearing, and 
noble, impressive countenance. Him and his son-in- 
law, Alexander McLeod, the royal governor, Martin, 
recommended to the King for appointment as major 
and captain, respectively, saying of them, "besides be- 
ing men of great worth and good character, [they] 
have most extensive influence over the Highlanders 
here, a great part of whom are of their own names and 
families." MacDonald, so lately in rebellion against 
the House of Hanover, was now eager to make a dis- 
play of his loyalty, and in July, 1775, he paid a secret 
visit to Governor Martin to perfect with him plans for 
organizing and arming his countrymen. Their plans 
met with the hearty concurrence of the King and Min- 
istry, and had a most important bearing on the fate of 
the American cause in the South. Briefly, they were 
as follows : MacDonald was to organize and arm the 
Highlanders and march them to Wilmington, where 

4. Colonial Records, X, 173. 



Highland Scotch 63 

they were to be joined by Lord Cornwallis with seven 
regiments of British regulars, escorted by a powerful 
fleet of fifty-two sails under the command of Sir Peter 
Parker. Sir Henry Clinton with a force of 2,000 
troops from the British army at Boston was to sail 
for Wilmington and take command of the expedition. 
It was fully expected that before such a combined force 
North Carolina would fall an easy victim, and then 
could be used as a base for operations against South 
Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia, thus cutting off the 
entire South from the middle and northern colonies 
and crushing the rebellion at its very inception. 

That this scheme did not succeed was due to the 
splendid victory of the Whigs at Moore's Creek Bridge 
in the early morning hours of February 27, 1776. 
Here was an event of far greater significance than is 
usually accorded to it in our histories, and the histor- 
ian Frothingham is guilty of no exaggeration when he 
calls it the "Lexington and Concord" of the South. 
The first day of February, 1776, was set as the date 
for the gathering of the clans, and on that day the 
royal standard was unfurled at Cross Creek. The 
Fiery Cross had been sent abroad, and soon the clans- 
men gathered from far and near, "from the wide 
plantations on the river bottoms, and from the rude 
cabins in the depths of the lonely pine forests, with 
broadswords at their sides, in tartan garments and 
feathered bonnets, and keeping step to the shrill music 
of the bag-pipe. There came, first of all. Clan Mac- 
Donald with Clan MacLeod near at hand, with lesser 
numbers of Clan MacKensie, Clan MacEae, Clan Mac- 
Lean, Clan MacKay, Clan MacLachlan, and still others 
— variously estimated at from fifteen hundred to three 



64 Race Elements of North Carolina 

thousand."^ Drawn up in battle array, this Highland 
host presented a martial spectacle that might have 
stirred the sluggish blood of King George himself ; and 
cheer after cheer broke from the throats of the loyal 
clansmen as their beloved Flora MacDonald, the pride 
of every true Highlander, gracefully seated on a milk- 
white horse,^ rode down their line and called upon 
them to do battle loyally for their sovereign and his 
crown. 

On February 18th the Highlanders, 1,600 strong, 
singing the songs of their native hills and keeping step 
to the music of the bag-pipes, marched out of Cross 
Creek and took the road to Wilmington. After some 
marching and counter-marching, they reached the 
bridge over Moore's Creek late in the evening of Feb- 
ruary 26, and there encamped for the night. Beyond 
the bridge 1,100 sturdy Whigs, under Colonel Richard 
Caswell and Colonel Alexander Lillington, slept upon 
their arms, waiting the command to dispute the pas- 
sage with the MacDonalds. The sun had not yet risen 
behind the dark and sombre pines on the morning of 
the twenty-seventh, when the Scots broke camp and 
prepared for battle. Their signal for attack was to be 
three cheers, the drums to beat and the pipes to play; 
their battle cry was "King George and broadswords." 
Leading the way Donald MacLeod stepped upon the 
bridge and called on his men to follow. From out of 
the dark beyond a voice rang out in the cold, crisp air : 
''Who goes there?" "A friend," replied MacLeod. 
"A friend to whom?" demanded the other. "To the 
King," answered the Scot. Then fell a deathly silence. 



5. MacLean: The Highlanders in America, p. 127. 

6. Tradition. 



Highland Scotch 65 

suddenly broken by the loud report of a gun, as Mac- 
Leod shouted the signal for attack, and dashed upon 
the bridge, followed by his men. The American mus- 
kets laid the brave Highlander low, and swept the 
bridge clear of his followers. Others rushed into the 
breach, but in vain. Thirty of the foremost fell dead, 
the rest lost heart, turned and fled. No victory could 
be more complete. The patriots had but one man 
killed and one wounded; the total killed among the 
Highlanders was about seventy, and their army was 
completely scattered. Three hundred and fifty guns, 
150 swords and dirks, 1,500 excellent rifles, a box con- 
taining £15,000 in gold, thirteen wagons of supplies, 
850 soldiers and many officers including Allan Mac- 
Donald, fell into the hands of the victors. A few days 
later Clinton and Cornwallis sailed into the Cape Fear 
with their powerful fleet and army, but no loyalist 
force was ther?? to welcome them. Abandoning an 
enterprise so desperately begun they sailed away to 
Charleston to knock in vain against the palmetto logs 
of Fort Moultrie. 

The victory at Moore's Creek Bridge saved JSTorth 
Carolina from conquest, and in all probability saved 
Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia to the Ameri- 
can cause. Of this victory Bancroft writes: "In less 
than a fortnight, more than nine thousand four hun- 
dred men of North Carolina rose against the enemy; 
and the coming of Clinton inspired no terror. . . . 
Virginia offered assistance, and South Carolina would 
gladly have contributed relief ; but North Carolina had 
men enough of her own to crush insurrection and 
guard against invasion; and as they marched in 
triumph through their piney forests, they were per- 
suaded that in their own woods they could win an easy 

5 



66 Race Elements of N'orth Carolina 

victory over Britisli regulars. The terrors of a fate 
like that of I^orfolk could not dismay the patriots of 
Wilmington; the people spoke more and more of inde- 
pendence; and the Provincial Congress, at its im- 
pending session, was expected to give an authoritative 
form to the prevailing desire."'^ The Provincial Con- 
gress met at Halifax Aj)ril 4, 1776, and eight days 
later, April 12, "Resolved, that the delegates for this 
Colony in the Continental Congress be impowered to 
concur with the delegates of the other Colonies in de- 
claring Independency, and forming foreign alliances." 
Thvis as a result of their brilliant victory over the 
Highlanders, "the patriot party" in the words of 
Richard Frothingham, "carried North Carolina as a 
unit in favor of independence, when the colonies from 
New England to Virginia were in solid array against 
it."8 

The fate of the Highlanders was a hard one. In 
1777, the General Assembly determined that the safety 
of the State demanded the expulsion from its borders 
of all who would not take the oath of allegiance. Ac- 
cordingly an act was passed which held out to all 
Loyalists the alternative of allegiance or banishment. 
True to their principles, most of those who were Loyal- 
ists from conviction accepted the latter choice. Chief 
among them were the Scotch-Highlanders who de- 
parted in large numbers. "Two-thirds of Cumberland 
county intend leaving this State," reported the colonel 
of the militia of that county in July, 1777. "Great 
Numbers of these infatuated and over-loyal People," 
said the North Carolina Gazette, in October, 1777, 



7. History of the United States, (edition of 1860), VIII., 

289-290. 

8. Rise of the Republic of the United States, p. 504. 



Highland Scotch 67 

"returned from America to their own Country," among 
wliom was Flora MacDonald. Others found new 
homes in Nova Scotia, Among the prominent High- 
landers who left North Carolina in 1777 was John 
Hamilton, "a merchant of considerable note," who 
sailed from ISTew Bern on a "Scotch transport, having 
on Board a ISTumber of Gentlemen of that Nation." 
Hamilton afterwards organized these Highlanders into 
a Loyalist regiment w^hich on numerous battlefields in 
the South worthily maintained the high reputation of 
their race for its fighting qualities. This exodus of 
the Highlanders from North Carolina in 1777 was 
comparable to their exodus from Scotland after Cullo- 
den. The policy which was responsible for it was per- 
haps the only course open to the new State ; neverthe- 
less one may be permitted to regret that circumstances 
compelled North Carolina to drive from her borders so 
many men and women of this strong, virile race. 

It was the peculiar misfortune of the Highlanders to 
suffer defeat in Scotland fighting against the House of 
Hanover, and again to suffer defeat in America fight- 
ing for the House of Hanover. In either case, how- 
ever much we may lament their error of judgment, we 
cannot fail to applaud their sense of loyalty to duty as 
they understood it. That same sense of loyalty led 
those who remained after the Revolution to pledge 
their allegiance to their new country in whose service 
their descendants have always manifested an equal 
readiness to labor and to sacrifice. In every depart- 
ment of our government descendants of the Highland- 
ers have rendered distinguished service, and in every 
crisis of our history they have been conspicuous for 
prompt and ready response to the call of duty. To 
estimate correctly how much North Carolina is in- 



68 Race Elements of North Carolina 

debted to this race, let us recall in military history the 
names of Charles and Joseph McDowell, whose daring 
deeds on the very crest of King's Mountain turned the 
tide of the Revolution and led the way to Yorktown; 
in constitutional history the names of Samuel John- 
ston and Archibald Maclaine, whose ability and learn- 
ing contributed so largely to the formation of the State 
Constitution of 1776 and to the ratification of the Fed- 
eral Constitution by North Carolina; in politics the 
names of James J. McKay, for many years the leader 
of his party in the National Congress; in jurispru- 
dence James C. McRae and Robert M. Douglas, succes- 
sors of Gaston and Ruffin on the Supreme Court Bench ; 
in industry Paul C. Cameron; in literature John 
Charles McNeill ; in education Charles Duncan Mclver 
— Highland names all, which remind us that in their 
contributions to the history and fame of North Caro- 
lina the Highlanders have been second to no element in 
our population. 



IV 
The Scotch-Irish in North CaroUna 

During the four decades from 1735 to 1775 
two streams of population flowing mostly from Penn- 
sylvania poured into the central part of I*Torth Caro- 
lina and spread far and wide over the fertile plains and 
valleys of that section. Though flowing side by side 
these streams originated in separate sources and 
throughout their courses kept themselves entirely dis- 
tinct. One was composed of immigrants of German 
descent, the other of immigrants of Scotch-Irish de- 
scent. Today we are concerned only with the latter. 
The term Scotch-Irish is a misnomer, and does not, 
as one would naturally suppose, signify a mixed race 
of Scotch and Irish ancestry. It is a geographical, not 
a racial term. Those who proudly claim this name 
reject with ill-founded disdain the implication con- 
veyed by the latter half of the compound, and point 
with justifiable pride to their pure Scottish descent. 
The so-called Scotch-Irish are in reality Scotch peo- 
ple, or descendants of Scotch people who once resided 
in Ireland. Into that country they came as invaders 
and lived as conquerors, hated as such by the natives, 
and feeling for them the contempt which conquerors 
always feel for subjugated races. From one generation 
to another the two races dwelt side by side separated by 
an immense chasm of religious, political, social, and 
racial hostility, each intent upon preserving its blood 
pure and uncontaminated by any mixture with the 
other. Thus the Scotch in Ireland remained Scotch, 
and the term "Irish" as applied to them is nothing 
more than a geographical term used to distinguish the 



70 Race Elements of North Carolina 

Scotch immigrants who came to America from Ireland 
from those who came hither directly from Scotland. In 
fact the term "Scotch-Irish" is American in its origin 
and use, and is not known or used in Ireland. In that 
country, whose Irish population is almost entirely 
Roman Catholic in religion, the descendants of the 
Scotch settlers are generally known as "Irish Protes- 
tants" or "Irish Presbyterians." This is a far more 
significant term than our "Scotch-Irish," It raises the 
natural and inevitable inquiry. Whence came they? It 
recalls their long and bitter struggle for existence 
against the native population. It points to the ardor, 
the depth, the sincerity of their religious faith. It 
testifies to their force of character and their intellec- 
tual vigor. They are, as the name tells us, Protestants 
in Ireland; hence their presence there must be ex- 
plained. They are the representatives of Presbyter- 
ianism in the very stronghold of Catholicism; hence 
we may infer a long and bitter struggle for the right 
to exist with its ultimate victory. They are distin- 
guished from the general population by a religious 
term, hence we may know that they are earnest, im- 
movable, sincere in their religious convictions. They 
have in the face of intense religious and racial antag- 
onism remained firm, fearless, triumphant over over- 
whelming numbers ; hence we deduce their strength of 
character and keenness of intellect. A people possess- 
ing such marked characteristics are evidently well 
worthy of serious study. 

The Scotch settlers of Ireland came principally from 
the Lowlands of Scotland. This region lies to the 
south and west of the river Clyde and in area is about 
one-tenth the size of North Carolina. It is perhaps 
not too much to say that no other region of the same 



Scotch-Irish 71 

size in the modern world has produced a larger number 
of eminent men. "It is only necessary," says Dr. 
McKelway, "to mention the names of William Wallace, 
Robert Bruce, John Knox, and Robert Burns to show 
that the race that inhabited these western Lowlands 
was a virile race. Here arose the royal line of the 
Stuarts; the family of which William Ewart Glad- 
stone was the most illustrious scion; and the ancestors 
of our own Washington. Here lived the Lollards, Re- 
formers before the Reformation, and here were mar- 
shalled the leaders and armies of the Reformation it- 
self. Here was the chief home of the Covenanters. 
Here has been built the great manufacturing city of 
the modern world, Glasgow, a model city in many re- 
spects. And from these seven counties flowed the main 
stream of immigrants into the province of Ulster, Ire- 
land, from which they emigrated in turn to the Ameri- 
can colonies, to be known henceforth as Scotch-Irish." ^ 
A fine description of the Lowland Scotch has been 
drawn by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Says he: "It 
is a remarkable history, that of Scotland, one of the 
most remarkable in the annals of men. Shut up in 
that narrow region of mountain and of lake, a land 
of storm and cold and mist, with no natural resources 
except a meager soil and a tempestuous sea to yield a 
hard-earned living; poor in this world's goods, few in 
number, for six hundred years these hardy people 
maintained their independence against their powerful 
foe to the southward, and only united at last upon 
equal terms. For six hundred years they kept their 
place among the nations, were the allies of France, 



1. McKelway: The Scotch-Irish in North Carolina (N. C. 
Booklet, Vol. IV, No. 11). 



72 Race Elements of North Carolina 

were distinguished for their military virtues on the 
continent of Europe, and cherished a pride of race 
and country to which their deeds gave them an un- 
clouded title. They did all these things, this little peo- 
ple, by hard fighting. Eor six hundred years they 
fought, sometimes in armies, sometimes in bands, al- 
ways along the border, frequently among themselves. 
It was a terrible training. It did not tend to promote 
the amenities of life, but it gave slight chance to the 
timid or the weak. Those six centuries of bitter strug- 
gle for life and independence, waged continuously 
against nature and man, not only made the Scotch 
formidable in battle, renowned in every camp in 
Europe, but they developed qualities of mind and char- 
acter which became inseparable from the race. For it 
was not merely by changing blows that the Scotch 
maintained their national existence. Under the stress 
of all these centuries of trial they learned to be patient 
and persistent, with a fixity of purpose which never 
weakened, a tenacity which never slackened, and a de- 
termination which never wavered. The Scotch intel- 
lect, passing through the same severe ordeal, as it was 
quickened, tempered, and sharpened, so it acquired a 
certain relentlessness in reasoning which it never lost. 
It emerged at last complete, vigorous, acute, and pene- 
trating. With these strong qualities of mind and char- 
acter was joined an intensity of conviction which 
burned beneath the cool and calculating manner of 
which the stern and unmoved exterior gave no sign, 
like the fire of a furnace, rarely flaming, but giving 
forth a fierce and lasting heat."^ 



2. Address in the U. S. Senate, March 12, 1910, at the pre- 
sentation to the United States by the State of South 
Carolina of a statue of John C. Calhoun. 



Scotch-Irish 73 

The three characteristics which have most distin- 
guished the Scotch-Irish are: (1) The earnestness of 
their religious convictions; (2) their democracy; (3) 
their interest in education. 

(1) In estimating the character of the LowLand 
Scotch, the most important fact to be considered is 
their religion. To it we may trace in a large measure 
that intensity of conviction, that tenacity of purpose, 
that vigor of intellect of which Senator Lodge so elo- 
quently speaks. The Scotch Lowlander was an intel- 
lectual, not an emotional being, and his religious faith 
was founded on intellectual convictions rather than on 
spiritual emotions. To his type of intellect, penetrat- 
ing, logical, delighting in abstractions, the theology of 
Calvin and Knox appealed with especial force, and 
having once embraced their doctrines he was prepared 
to follow the Calvinistic logic to its ultimate conclu- 
sions. Forced to battle for existence not only against 
Roman Catholicism, but also against the Protestant 
Church of England, the Scotch Calvinists became the 
Protestants of Protestantism. Their system of Pres- 
byteriauism grew up at the outset without direct recog- 
nition from the law. It bound Scotland together as it 
had never been bound before, by its administrative or- 
ganization, its Church synods and general assemblies, 
and by the power which it gave the lay elders in each 
congregation. It summoned the laymen in an over- 
whelming majority to the earlier assemblies, and thus 
called the people at large to a decisive voice in the 
administration of affairs. "JN'o Church constitution," 
says John Richard Greene, "has proved in practice so 
democratic as that of Scotland." Its influence raised 
the nation at large to a consciousness of its own power, 
for the sphere of action to which it called the people 



74 Race Elements of ISTorth Carolina 

was in fact not a mere ecclesiastical but a national 
sphere ; and the power of the Church was felt more and 
more in the political aifairs of the nation. Indeed, the 
Scottish people rose into power under the guise of the 
Scottish Kirk. 

(2) Their democracy not only in ecclesiastical but 
in political affairs as well. Calvinism exalted the in- 
dividual man, and accordingly the Church which grew 
out of it was a democratic institution, resting upon the 
individual. Each congregation sent representatives to 
the synods and to the assemblies. The Church, there- 
fore, legislated for itself, not through bishops and 
clergy, but through the laymen, that is, the people, and 
this is the very essence of democracy. Now, in a coun- 
try where Church and State are so closely allied as 
they were in Scotland in the sixteenth century, it is but 
a short step from ecclesiastical to political affairs. The 
same democratic principles, therefore, which prevailed 
in the Church might easily be made to prevail in the 
State. Thus the Scottish Presbytery became a training 
school for democracy. No one understood this better 
than King James. "A Scottish Presbytery," he de- 
clared, "as well fitteth with monarchy as God and the 
Devil. No bishop, no king!" And James, you will 
remember, was known as "the wisest fool in Christen- 
dom." 

(3) Their interest in education. The Roman Cath-^ 
olie Church of the sixteenth century, forbade the read- * 
ing of the Bible by the people. The Church of England, 
while it did not forbid it, certainly did not encourage 
it. But the study of the Bible by laymen was the very 
corner-stone of Calvinism. It followed, therefore, 
that Calvinism could not flourish unless the people 
could read and understand the Scriptures. Hence 



Scotch-Irish 75 

John Knox was perfectly logical when he exclaimed, 
"Let the people be taught !" Education, therefore, be- 
came, under that system, the handmaid of religion, for 
the Presbyterian Church of Scotland thoroughly un- 
derstood that if it was to stand and grow it must link 
hands with the school. 

These characteristics the Scotch Lowlanders carried 
with them to Ireland. Ireland, as you know, has al- 
ways been a thorn in the side of England, and even 
today the government of Ireland is perhaps the most 
difficult and serious of England's domestic problems. 
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the problem 
was vastly more difficult. Ireland was simply a con- 
quered country whose people, highly excitable, deeply 
patriotic, and serairbarbarousin civilization, were ever 
ready upon the slightest pretext to break out into re- 
bellion. The problem was intensified by the fact that 
their rulers were representatives not only of an alien 
race but also of a hateful religion. With the Irishman, 
as with the Scotchman, religion is the prime factor in 
his life, but between the two there is a vast difference. 
They represent types as far apart as the poles. Where- 
as, as I have already pointed out, religion with the 
Scotchman is the result of intellectual convictions, with ^ a 

the Irishman it is an emotional sejijiimentvlj The typi- ^fHr^n 
cal Irishman is perhaps the most emotional being on t^-*-**^ "fr*'^ 
earth, and in no respects are his sentiments more in- 
tense than in his devotion to his Church and his love of 
country. In fact with the Irishman religion and pa- 
triotism are synonymous terms. For century after 
century he has seen his Church attacked, oppressed, 
and outlawed by the same powerful enemy which has 
conquered his country, and as a result he has come to 
identify the cause of each as the cause of the other. 



76 Race Elements of North Carolina 

Thus in her relatious with Ireland, for generation 
after generation, England has assumed an attitude of 
hostility to the two most powerful national sentiments 
of the Irish race — patriotism and religion — and for 
more than three hundred years the history of Ireland 
has been an almost continuous history of tyranny on 
the part of her rulers, and rebellion on the part of her 
people. 

Such was the history of Ireland, particularly in the 
great province of Ulster, in the ]^orth, throughout the 
reign of Queen Elizabeth, So when James VI of 
Scotland, upon the death of Elizabeth, ascended the 
throne of England as James I, he found the province 
of Ulster in a deplorable condition. The English gov- 
ernment there was scarcely recognized by the people at 
all, and was a pure military despotism. The province 
was divided into ten districts, over each of which was 
a military commander in civil affairs and a bishop of 
the Church of England in ecclesiastical matters. It 
would be difficult to say which of the two was the more 
hateful to the natives. Ireland, like the Scotch High- 
lands, was inhabited by clansmen, who obeyed the laws 
and usages of the clan, and were loyal to their native 
chieftains. Like the chiefs of the Highlanders these 
Irish chiefs kept the country in a state of continuous 
rebellion against the English government. After the 
suppression of each rebellion, the British government 
confiscated the lands of the conquered, until finally 
practically all of the great province of Ulster, embrac- 
ing six large counties, containing four million acres of 
land, passed into the hands of the King. Soon after 
coming to the throne, King James determined on a 
plan of far-reaching importance with regard to Ulster. 
This plan was to take possession of the finest portions 



Scotch-Irish 77 

of this great tract of country, and to transfer tlie own- 
ersliip of the land from Irish Catholics to Scotch Pres- 
byterians, thus introducing a Scottish population in 
place of an Irish one, and Scotch Protestantism in 
place of Irish Catholicism. 

To secure settlers for this purpose, King James nat- 
urally looked to that portion of Scotland nearest to 
Ireland. If you will examine the map of the British 
Isles you will observe that the Western Lowlands of 
Scotland, where dwelt the Scotch Presbyterians whom 
I have described, are separated from the N'orth of 
Ireland by the I^orth Channel which is there only 
about twenty miles wide. Here James found the peo- 
ple who, of all his subjects, were best suited to his pur- 
pose. They possessed an intense racial pride and, 
therefore, could be depended upon not to intermarry 
with the Irish. They were the most intense of Pro- 
testants and, therefore, could be depended upon to re- 
sist the attacks of Catholicism. They were firm even 
to obstinacy in character, and as they would owe their 
lands in Ireland to the generosity of the King they 
could be depended upon to uphold, support, and main- 
tain his Crown against all opposition. Accordingly in 
1609 the lands of Ulster were surveyed, and the next 
year the settlers began to arrive. During the next ten 
years from 30,000 to 40,000 Scotch Lowlanders were 
settled in Ulster. They represented one of the most 
industrious, law-abiding and intelligent races in 
Europe. In Ulster, "they drained the swamps, felled 
the forests, sowed wheat and flax, raised cattle and 
sheep, began the manufacture of linen and woolen 
cloth, and not only made their own goods ... but 
began the exportation of linen and woolen cloth to 



78 Race Elements of North Carolina 

England."^ As Greene says: "In its material result 
tlie Plantation of Ulster was undoubtedly a brilliant 
success. Earms and homesteads, churches and mills, 
rose fast amid the desolate wilds of Tyrone. . . . 
The foundations of the economic prosperity which has 
raised Ulster high above the rest of Ireland in wealth 
and intelligence were undoubtedly laid in the confisca- 
tion of 1610." 

The history of the Scotch in Ireland is one of the 
most interesting stories in human annals, but I can 
dAvell on it here only long enough to note the influence 
which their residence in Ireland had on their charac- 
ter. As a minority in the midst of an overwhelming 
majority, as aliens surrounded by a bitterly hostile 
native population, but two courses were open to the 
Scotch in Ireland, — they must either succumb to the 
force of the majority, sink their own identity in that 
of the natives, and become themselves Irish; or they 
must hold themselves absolutely apart from the native 
population, and develop more and more the social, re- 
ligious, and racial differences between the two peoples. 
If you have followed the description I have given of 
the Scotch character, you will have no doubt as to 
which of these alternatives the Scotch in Ireland 
adojited. In the midst of Irish Catholicism their Protes- 
tantism became more and more intensely Protestant. 
Seeing among the poverty-stricken Irish population 
the results of shiftlessness and improvidence in in- 
dustrial affairs, the Scotch laid yet greater emphasis 
upon industry and frugality, and became remarkable 
for their comfortable homes and appearances, their 



3. McKelway: The Scotch-Irish in North Carolina {Book- 
let, IV, 11). 



Scotch-Irish 79 

regular conduct and perseverance in business. Sur- 
rounded by a population which they regarded as much 
their inferior, the racial pride of the Scotch, already 
deep and strong, became yet deeper and stronger, until 
the Scotchman in Ireland became a more intense 
Scotchman than the Scotchman in Scotland, In some 
respects the effects of his residence in Ireland, under 
the peculiar circumstances which I have described, 
were anything else but admirable. If it confirmed and 
strengthened his religious convictions, it tended at the 
same time to make him a bigot ; if it developed indus- 
trial and frugal habits, it tended at the same time to 
develop greed and penuriousness ; if it strengthened 
racial instincts, it tended at the same time to encourage 
pride and vaingloriousness. "The fact that he was the 
royal colonist wrought in him the pride, the contempt, 
the hauteur and swaggering daring of a victorious race 
planted among a despised race." "The scorn of the 
Scot was met by the curse of the Celt," and intermar- 
riages between members of the two races were so rare 
and uncommon as to be anomalous. The Scotch people 
kept to the Scotch people, so that the Scotch-Irish, as 
has been so forcibly said, are in reality "Scotch 
through and through, they are Scottish out and out, 
and they are Irish because, in the Providence of God, 
they were sent for some generations" to dwell in the 
Emerald Isle. 

From Ireland descendants of these Scotch settlers 
came to America. Anomalous as it may seem, it is 
yet true that the immediate cause of this second emi- 
gration arose out of the fact that the Scotch settlement 
in Ireland had succeeded too well. Planted there by 
King James in 1610 to develop the country industri- 
ally and establish a strong Protestant civilization, a 



80 Race Elements of North Carolina 

century later the success of their industrial enterprises 
was exciting the envy of their competitors in England, 
while the tenacity with which they held to their reli- 
gion gave offense to the hishops and clergy of the 
Established Church. In these two sources the one 
economic, the other religious, originated the emigra- 
tion to America. 

I have already mentioned the fact that the early 
Scotch settlers in Ulster laid the foundation of the 
woolen and linen manufactures for which that district 
has become famous. During the next century these 
enterprises developed rapidly. Out of the swamps of 
Ulster arose the cities of Belfast, Londonderry, and 
other manufacturing cities which became strong com- 
petitors of the manufacturing districts of England. At 
the close of the seventeenth century the industrial con- 
ditions in England were exceedingly unprosperous, and 
the English manufacturers imagined that they were be- 
ing ruined by the competition of Ireland in the woolen 
trade. In 1698 accordingly the British Parliament 
petitioned the King for protection, and at his command 
the Irish Parliament, which was totally subservient to 
the King, passed an act forbidding the exporting of 
woolen goods from that country. This was later fol- 
lowed by a second act forbidding the exportation of 
such goods to any country except to England. Thus 
the Irish wool growers and manufacturers were placed 
absolutely at the mercy of their English rivals who 
were able to fix their own prices for the Irish products. 

About the same time severe penal laws were enacted 
against the Roman Catholics and all dissenters from 
the Established Church. The reign of Queen Anne 
was essentially "a High Church regime" and the High 
Church party, led by the bishops, ruled supreme in the 



Scotch-Ibish 81 

Irisli Parliament. They could see but little choice 
between the Roman Catholicism which King James 
wished to stamp out, and the Presbyterianism which 
he had used for his purpose. Under their leadership, 
therefore, the Irish Parliament passed a series of sta- 
tutes forbidding the exercise of the Roman Catholic 
religion, and greatly restricting the worship of the 
Presbyterians. A test act was passed which required 
all persons who held any office under the government, 
all persons acting in town councils, and all persons 
practicing law, to take the communion according to 
the forms prescribed by the Church of England. This, 
of course, Presbyterians refused to do, and as practi- 
cally all such places in Ulster were filled by Presbyter- 
ians they were all immediately driven out of their of- 
fices. The political persecution was followed by a 
series of fines and imprisonments for those exercising 
the Presbyterian form of worship, and by social ostra- 
cism. Presbyterian school-masters, guilty of discharg- 
ing their duties, were liable to imprisonment. The 
doors of Presbyterian churches were nailed up, and 
an effort was made in the Irish Parliament to have an 
act passed declaring marriages performed by Presby- 
terian clergymen illegal and void. As one historian 
has expressed it, "All over Ulster there was an outburst 
of Episcopal tyranny." 

Of course no high-spirited, liberty-loving, energetic 
people would for an instant think of enduring such a 
situation. Finding reform impossible in Ireland, the 
Scotch-Irish, as we may now call them, looked to 
America for relief, and for fifty years before the be- 
ginning of the American Revolution left Ireland in 
crowds, taking with them their families, never to re- 
turn. In 1718, there is mention of "both ministers and 

6 



82 Kace Elements of North Carolina 

people going off." In 1728 Archbishop Boulter stated 
that "above 4,200 men, women and children have been 
shipped off from hence for the West Indies within 
three years." In 1740, a famine in Ulster "gave an 
immense impulse" to emigration, and it was estimated 
that during the next several years the annual flow to 
America amounted to 12,000 persons. From 1771 to 
1773 "the whole emigration from Ulster is estimated 
at 30,000, of whom 10,000 were weavers."* Of this 
emigration, Froude says : "And now commenced the 
Protestant emigration, which robbed Ireland of the 
bravest defenders of the English interests, and peopled 
the American seaboard with fresh flights of Puritans. 
Twenty thousand left Ulster on the destruction of the 
woolen trade. Many more were driven away by the 
first passing of the Test Act. . . . Men of spirit 
and energy refused to remain in a country where they 
were held as unfit to receive the rights of citizens; 
and thenceforward, until the spell of tyranny was 
broken in 1782, annual shiploads of families poured 
themselves out from Belfast and Londonderry. The 
resentment which they carried with them continued 
to burn in their new homes; and in the War of Inde- 
pendence, England had no fiercer enemies than the 
grandsons and great-grandsons of the Presbyterians 
who had held Ulster against Tyrconnell." ^ 

Though a few of these settlers landed at Charleston 
and moved up the banks of the Pee Dee, the Catawba, 
and the Broad rivers, to the hill country of North 
Carolina and South Carolina, the great majority of 
them landed at Philadelphia. Many of these bought 
lands and settled in Pennsylvania, others moved south- 



4. Hanna: The Scotch-Irish, I, 621-22. 

5. The English in Ireland, I, 392. 



Scotch-Irish 83 

ward into the western parts of Virginia and North 
Carolina. The reason for this is stated by our early 
governors to be the high price of lands in Pennsyl- 
vania, which, declared Governor Johnston in 1751, 
was already "overstocked with people," In 1752 
Bishop Spangenberg, the leader of the Moravians in 
N'orth Carolina, declared that many settlers came here 
from England, Scotland, and the northern colonies, 
"on account of poverty, as they wished to own lands 
and were too poor to buy in Pennsylvania or JSTew 
Jersey." To the same effect wrote Governor Dobbs 
in 1755. He declared that as many as ten thousand 
immigrants from Holland, Britain, and Ireland had 
landed at Philadelphia in a single season, and conse- 
quently many were "obliged to remove to the south- 
ward for want of lands to take up" in Pennsylvania. 
There was still another very important reason for the 
large immigration of Scotch-Irish settlers into N'orth 
Carolina. During the thirty years from 1734 to 1765 
the chief executives of ISTorth Carolina were Gabriel 
Johnston, who came here from Scotland, and Matthew 
Eowan and Arthur Dobbs, who were both Scotch-Irish- 
men from Ulster. All three of these governors were 
active in their efforts to induce Scotch and Scotch- 
Irish immigrants to settle in North Carolina. 
"Through these three men, their relatives, friends, con- 
nections and acquaintances in the north of Ireland and 
the south of Scotland, North Carolina was, perhaps, 
better known there than in any other part of the old 
world." 6 

The route which these settlers followed from Penn- 
sylvania to North Carolina is plainly laid down on the 



6. Saunders, W. L.: Prefatory Notes to Colonial Records 
of North Carolina, V, xl. 



84 Race Elements of ]S]'orth Carolina 

maps of that day. It is called "The Great Road from 
the Yadkin River through Virginia to Philadelphia," 
and ran from Philadelphia through Lancaster and 
York in Pennsylvania, to Winchester in Virginia, up 
the Shenandoah Valley, thence southward across the 
Dan River to the Moravian settlements on the Yadkin 
River. The distance was 435 miles. On this route 
Colonel William L. Saunders, in his Prefatory N^otes 
to the Colonial Records of JSTorth Carolina, makes the 
following interesting comment: "Rememhering the 
route General Lee took when he went into Pennsyl- 
vania on that memorable Gettysburg campaign, it will 
be seen that very many of the North Carolina boys, 
both of German and of Scotch-Irish descent, in fol- 
lowing their great leader, visited the homes of their 
ancestors and went hither by the very route by which 
they came away. To Lancaster and York counties, in 
Pennsylvania, North Carolina owes more of her popu- 
lation than to any other known part of the world, and 
surely there never was a better population than they 
and their descendants — never better citizens, and cer- 
tainly never better soldiers."''' 

The date of the first Scotch-Irish settlers in North 
Carolina is 1735. At a meeting of the Governor's 
Council, November 29th of that year. Governor Johns- 
ton informed the members that he had received a let- 
ter from Arthur Dobbs, "and some other gentlemen of 
distinction in Ireland," and Mr. Henry McCulloch, a 
merchant of London, "respecting their intention of 
sending over to this province several poor Protestant 
families with design of raising flax and hemp." They 
accordingly asked for a grant of 60,000 acres of land 



7. Saunders, W. L.: Prefatory Notes to Colonial Records of 
North Carolina. 



Scotch-Irish 85 

in New Hanover county on Black Kiver; and their 
request was granted. The following year the settlers 
arrived and organized themselves into two congrega- 
tions, known as Goshen and the Grove. But the tide 
of Scotch-Irish immigrants which followed a few years 
later flowed farther to the westward into what are 
now the counties of Guilford, Orange, Alamance, Cas- 
well Rowan, Iredell, Cabarrus, Mecklenburg, Lincoln, 
and' Gaston. In 1751 Governor Johnston wrote: 
"Inhabitants flock in here daily, mostly from Pennsyl- 
vania and other parts of America, and some directly 
from Europe. They commonly seat themselves toward 
the west and have got near the mountains." Bishop 
Spangenberg in 1752 declared that "there are many 
people coming here because they are informed that 
stock does not require to be fed in the winter season. 
Numbers of [Scotch-] Irish have therefore moved m, 
but they will find themselves deceived because it they 
do not feed their stock in winter they will find to their 
cost that they will perish." How rapidly these immi- 
grants poured into North Carolina is shown by a letter 
from Matthew Rowan, acting-governor, m 1753. He 
writes: "In the year 1746 I was up in the country that 
is now Anson, Orange, and Rowan counties. There 
were not then above one hundred fighting men [*. e., 
a total population of less than 500] ; there is now at 
least three thousand, for the most part Irish Protest- 
ants and Germans, and daily increasing." This means 
that within six years the population of five hundred 
had grown to at least fifteen thousand. Another indi- 
cation of the rapid increase of population on the west- 
ern frontier is the dates of the formation of new coun- 
ties in that section. You should bear in mmd that 
these counties as they now exist, though still retaining 



86 Race Elements of !N"orth Carolina 

their old names, have not retained their original 
boundary lines: the frontier county, in colonial days, 
had no western boundary, but extended as far west- 
ward as white population extended. Accordingly 
every time a county was formed from the western end 
of an existing county, we know that white population 
had moved farther westward. In 1746 Edgecombe,, 
Craven, and Bladen had such far-reaching boundaries. 
But so rapidly had population increased in the west 
that in that year Granville was cut off from the western 
part of Edgecombe, Johnston from Craven, and three 
years later, Anson from Bladen. The boundaries of 
these counties extended to the mountains and beyond. 
In 1752 Orange, still farther westward, was taken 
from Granville, Johnston and Bladen, and in 1753 
Rowan was cut off from Anson. Nine years later 
another part of Anson, still farther to the westward, 
was taken to form Mecklenburg, which had become the 
center of Scotch-Irish settlements. Thus within six- 
teen years, as a result of the influx of Scotch-Irish 
and German immigrants into Piedmont Carolina, it 
was necessary to erect six new counties for their con- 
venience. 

About the only professions represented among these 
early Scotch-Irish settlers were the ministry, teaching, 
and surveying, and frequently these three were repre- 
sented by a single individual. Later, after the settle- 
ment became well established, lawyers found their way 
thither. Among the settlers the trades were well repre- 
sented. There were weavers, joiners, coopers, wheel- 
wrights, wagon-makers, tailors, blacksmiths, hatters, 
merchants, laborers, wine-makers, rope-makers, and 
fullers. Practically all were farmers, occupying small 
tracts of land, and doing their own work. Accord- 



Scotch-Irish 87 

ingly children were regarded as an industrial asset, 
and large families prevailed. In 1755 Governor Dobbs 
declared that the Scotch-Irish family usually num- 
bered from five to ten children. But, as Dr. McKel- 
way says, their chief wealth was "in their own capacity 
to manufacture what they needed. When the goods 
brought with them began to wear out, the blacksmith 
built his forge, the weaver set up his loom, and the 
tailor brought out his goose. A tannery was built on 
the nearest stream and mills for grinding the wheat 
and corn were erected on the swift water courses. Saw 
mills were set up, and logs were turned into plank. 
The women not only made their own dresses, but the 
material as well, spinning the wool and afterwards the 
cotton into lindsey and checks and dyeing it according 
to the individual taste. ... In other words, the 
people were an industrial as well as an industrious 
people." ^ 

It is a rather difficult task to arrive at a just esti- 
mate of the character of the Scotch-Irish. There is 
perhaps no virtue in the whole catalogue of human 
virtues which has not been ascribed to them; no great 
principle of human liberty in our political and social 
system which has not been placed to their credit; no 
great event in our history which they are not said to 
have caused. Eulogy has exhausted the English tongue 
in their praise. Today, however, we are dealing with 
history, not with eulogy. We know that the Scotch- 
Irishman was domestic in his habits and loved his 
home and family; but we know also that he was an 
unemotional being, seldom giving expression to his 
affections and accordingly presenting to the world the 

8. Booklet, IV, No. 11. 



88 Race Elements of N^orth Carolina 

appearance of great reserve, coldness, and austerity. 
He was loyal to his own kith and kin, but stern and 
unrelenting with his enemies. He was deeply and 
earnestly religious, but the very depth and earnestness 
of his convictions tended to make him narrow-minded 
and bigotted. He was law-abiding so long as the laws 
were to his liking, but when they ceased to be he dis- 
regarded them, quietly if possible, forcibly if necessary. 
Independent and self-reliant, he was somewhat opin- 
ionated and inclined to lord it over any who would 
submit to his aggressions. He was brave, and he loved 
the stir of battle. He came of a fighting race; the 
blood of the old Covenanters, of the Ironsides of 
Cromwell, flowed in his veins, and the beat of the drum, 
the music of the fife, the call of the bugle aroused his 
fighting instincts. His whole history shows that he 
would fight, he would die, but he could never be sub- 
dued. In short, in both his admirable and his unad- 
mirable traits, he possessed just the qualities which 
were needed on the Carolina frontier in the middle of 
the eighteenth century ; and if you have listened closely 
to my story of his career in Scotland and in Ireland, 
you will not be surprised that it was he who conquered 
the great wilderness of the Piedmont Plateau, drove 
back the savages, and became, as Mr. Poosevelt has 
said, "the pioneers of our people in their march west- 
ward, the vanguard of the army of fighting settlers, 
who with axe and rifle won their way from the Alle- 
ghanies to the Rio Grande and the Pacific."^ 

When the tide of Revolution rolled upon the back- 
country, the Scotch-Irish were to a man the staunchest 
of American patriots. They had from the first strenu- 

9. Winning of the West, I, 134. 



Scotch-Irish 89 

ously opposed tlie policy of the Britisli Ministry, and 
as early as May, 1775, as perhaps some of you have 
heard, the Scotch-Irish of Mecklenburg county met at 
Charlotte and on the last day of that month formed a 
new county government, organized the militia, and 
elected county officers, "who shall hold and exercise 
their several powers by virtue of this choice and in- 
dependent of the Crown of Great Britain and former 
constitution of this Province." Some estimate of their 
contribution to our constitutional history may be 
formed when we remember that to them we are in- 
debted for the separation of Church and State in our 
government; for the clause requiring the establish- 
ment of public schools, and for the most democratic 
features of our Constitution, particularly the division 
of power into three branches, executive, legislative and 
judicial. In the military history of the Revolution 
they gave to N'orth Carolina Major-General Robert 
Howe, Brigadier-Generals William Lee Davidson, 
Griffith Rutherford, James Hogan; Colonels Benjamin 
Cleveland, Isaac Shelby, and John Sevier. It was the 
Scotch-Irish, under Colonel Francis Locke, who, in 
1780, crushed the uprising of the Tories at Ramsauer's 
Mill and prepared the way for the overthrow of Corn- 
wallis in North Carolina. It was the Scotch-Irish 
under Colonel William R. Davie who so harassed the 
British army in its invasion of Western !N"orth Caro- 
lina that its officers baptized Charlotte, the center 
of the Scotch-Irish settlements, as the "Hornets' I^est" 
of the Revolution. It was the Scotch-Irish under 
Cleveland, Sevier, and Shelby who, on the very crest 
of King's Mountain, won the most brilliant victory of 
the Revolution. And it was largely a Scotch-Irish 
army which under General Greene stopped the tri- 



90 Race Elements of North Carolina 

umphant march of Lord Cornwallis at Guilford Court 
House, compelled him to abandon North Carolina, and 
sent him flying into the arms of Washington at York- 
town. 

Time does not permit me to follow the contribu- 
tions of this race to our history subsequent to the Revo- 
lution. In politics, in religion, in commerce, in indus- 
try, and in education it has furnished a long line of 
leaders, around whose names cluster many of the great- 
est events in our history. We meet them in legislative 
chambers, on the bench, in the chief executive's chair. 
More than one-fourth of our governors since the Revo- 
lution claimed descent from Scotch-Irish ancestors. 
The first president of the University, and the first 
Superintendent of Public Instruction, were of this 
virile race. In national affairs the Scotch-Irish of 
North Carolina have been represented by senators, 
congressmen, cabinet ofiicials, and presidents. From 
the Scotch-Irish of Mecklenburg county alone sprung 
two Presidents of the United States, Andrew Jackson 
and James K. Polk, while Andrew Johnson was also 
of this race. You see, therefore, that I cannot tell the 
story of the Scotch-Irish in North Carolina since the 
Revolution, without telling in a large measure, the his- 
tory of the State, and to do that would require more 
time and more patience than you have available. 



V 
The Germans in North CaroHna 

In the year 1773, while North Carolina was yet a 
colony of Great Britain, an English traveler set out 
on a journey of exploration from Hillsboro across the 
Blue Ridge Mountains. No well-marked highways 
directed him unerringly toward his destination, but 
innumerable trails and winding paths, zigzagging in 
all directions and crossing each other at a dozen dif- 
ferent points, led him hither and thither through the 
gloomy forests, seemingly beginning nowhere and lead- 
ing nowhere. Hunters and trappers might have fol- 
lowed them easily enough, but the traveler, having no 
such keen eyes as theirs, found it difficult to distinguish 
their faint outlines. The prospect before him, unprom- 
ising as it was, was not relieved by the following inter- 
esting fact, which he records in his account of his 
journey. "It was also unlucky for me," he declares, 
"that the greater number of the inhabitants on the 
plantations where I called to inquire my way, being 
Germans, neither understood my questions nor could 
render themselves intelligible to me." ^ 

Let us inquire who were these people here in North 
Carolina who could neither speak nor understand 
English, where they came from, and what they came 
for. Had the English traveler made his journey from 
Hillsboro a few years earlier he would now and then 
have met queer processions moving slowly along the 



1. Smyth, J. F. D.: A Tour in the United States of Amer- 
ica, I, 236. 



92 Race Elements of J^orth Carolina 

great wilderness road which led southward from Penn- 
sylvania to the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina. 
First would come a drove of cows, pigs and sheep trot- 
ting complaisantly toward him, followed closely by 
red-faced men and boys in the plain work-a-day clothes 
of the pioneer farmer. A canvas-covered wagon, 
stuffed with household goods, feather beds, and farm- 
ing implements, drawn by a pair or perhaps four stout 
horses, rumbling over roots and rocks and into holes 
and gulKes, would have brought up the rear. The 
traveler would have observed that the bed of this 
wagon was very low, but that it ran up high in the 
rear, under which feed troughs, pots, kettles, and water 
buckets dangled outside. From beneath the heavy 
canvas cover bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked children would 
have popped out their frowsy white heads to stare at 
the stranger or at the sights of the new country. From 
underneath the wagon the dogs, faithful sentinels of 
the camp, would have growled at the intruder and dis- 
played their long white teeth. Had the stranger 
stopped this odd procession and asked who these trav- 
elers were, whence they came, and whither they were 
going, he would have received an answer in the same 
unknown tongue which he heard in 1773. 

These patient movers were German immigrants 
coming into North Carolina from Pennsylvania. Vari- 
ous motives prompted their migrations. Some came in 
search of adventure and good hunting grounds. Others 
were looking for good lands. Still others were in- 
spired by religious motives. The first and smallest of 
these three groups became hunters and trappers, and 
in the vast unknown forests that extended along the 
foothills of the Alleghanies and covered the mountain 
sides, they chased the fox and the deer, hunted the 



German 93 

buffalo and the bear, sbot the wolf and the panther, 
and trapped the beaver and the otter. With the open- 
ing of the spring they would gather up their store of 
skins and furs, and turning their backs upon the 
wilderness seek the settlements, frequently going as 
far northward as Philadelphia, to dispose of their 
winter's harvests. Those who came in search of land 
of course found it plentiful, cheap, and fertile. The 
only capital needed on the Carolina frontier was thrift, 
energy, and commonsense, and these characteristics the 
Germans possessed in a marked degree. Accordingly 
many thousands of them, driven from the Fatherland 
by unfavorable conditions, carved handsome estates for 
themselves and their children out of the American 
wilderness; and at the outbreak of the Revolution the 
banks of the Yadkin and the Catawba rivers were 
dotted with their neat, pleasant farms and their plain 
but comfortable cabins. A third class of Germans 
came to Carolina in search of religious freedom and 
of fields for missionary activity. Like their neighbors, 
the Scotch-Irish, they were moved by a fervent re- 
ligious zeal. In the unsettled political conditions of 
Germany they had frequently been disturbed and some- 
times persecuted because of their religious faith, and 
those terrible civil wars of that period, waged in the 
personal interests of their rulers, often swept away at 
a single blow the savings of years. Looking beyond 
the Atlantic they beheld a vast continent where men 
were free from the burdens of constant civil war, and 
where they worshipped God as they pleased. To 
America, therefore, despite the discomforts and dan- 
gers of an eighteenth century sea voyage, thousands of 
them turned as to a haven of refuge and a land of 
promise, many of whom, however, were inspired less 



94 Race Elements of ISTorth Carolina 

by a desire to seek religious freedom for themselves 
than by a purpose to carry the gospel to the Indians. 
They found their first American homes in Pennsyl- 
vania, but from the years 1740 to 1775 a stream 
poured into the Piedmont section of North Carolina, 
settling in the territory then embraced in Anson and 
Granville counties, but now included in the counties of 
Orange, Rowan, Guilford, Burke, Lincoln, Randolph, 
Iredell, Stokes, Cabarrus, Davidson, Stanly, Catawba, 
Alamance, and Forsyth. These immigrants repre- 
sented three branches of the Protestant Church — the 
Lutheran, the German Reformed, and the Unitas 
Fratrum, or Moravian. 

The German settlers, though thoroughly law-abiding 
and patriotic, took but little interest in politics. The 
isolation of their situation on the extreme western 
frontier, their ignorance of the English language, and 
their lack of political experience made their participa- 
tion in the political affairs of the colony extremely 
difficult. They were willing to leave the management 
of the public business to the English and the Scotch, 
to whom politics came as second nature, while they 
devoted their energies to their religious, industrial 
and social affairs. In another very important respect 
the Germans differed from their English fellow-coun- 
trymen. The English in North Carolina following a 
strong bent toward individualism, settled on large and 
widely scattered plantations and developed an agricul- 
tural civilization based upon negro slave labor; the 
Germans, on the other hand, manifested a decided 
tendency toward communism, which led them to settle 
in compact communities, with the church and school 
as the center, and resulted in the development of an 
industrial civilization based on free white labor. 



German 9 5 

There were several such communities among the Ger- 
man settlements in North Carolina, hut the one hest 
adapted to our study is, of course, Wachovia. This 
is true not only because the development of the Wa- 
chovia settlement as an industrial community has been 
more complete than any other, but also because its rec- 
ords from the beginning of the settlement to the pres- 
ent day have been perfectly preserved and afford an 
opportunity for an historical study not found in any 
other community in North Carolina. To Wachovia 
as a typical German community in North Carolina I 
shall, accordingly, direct your attention. 

The history of Wachovia begins in the year 17§3- 
In that year a company of Moravians, moved by a 
desire to find a home free from religious persecution, 
by a purpose to preach the gospel to the Indians, and 
by a wish to develop a community on their own pecu- 
liar principles without let or hindrance from outside 
influences, determined to plant a settlement in North 
Carolina. With that thoroughness which is one of 
the most marked characteristics of the German people, 
they sent out an exploring party under the leadership 
of Bishop Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg, to view the 
land and select the site for the colony. Spangenberg's 
party set out on their tour from Edenton and crossed 
the entire length of North Carolina to the very summit 
of the Blue Kidge Mountains where they viewed the 
headwaters of streams that rise in North Carolina 
and flow into the Mississippi River. A diary^ in 
Avhich the good Bishop recorded the minutest details of 
their expedition tells us in simple and impressive lan- 



2. An English translation is printed in Colonial Records 
of North Carolina, V, 1-14. 



96 Race Elements of North Carolina 

guage the story of tlie dangers and hardships which 
they encountered. Sickness, cold, and hunger were 
among the least of their sufferings. After a thorough 
and painstaking survey, the party selected a tract of 
land in what is now Forsyth county containing ahout 
100,000 acres. "As regards this land," wrote the 
Bishop, "I regard it as a corner which the Lord has 
reserved for the Brethren. . . . The situation of 
this land is quite peculiar. It has countless springs 
and many creeks; so that as many mills can be built 
as may be desirable. These streams make many and 
fine meadow lands. . . . The stock would have 
excellent pasturage and might be kept for a number 
of winters among the reeds on the creeks. . . . 
The most of this land is level and plain; the air fresh 
and healthy, and the water is good, especially the 
springs, which are said not to fail in summer. . . . 
In the beginning a good forester and hunter will be 
indispensable. The wolves and bears must be extir- 
pated as soon as possible, or stock raising will be pur- 
sued under difficulties. The game in this region may 
also be very useful to the Brethren in the first years 
of the colony." Thus we see that the Bishop was im- 
pressed with the advantages which the country offered 
for the development of just such an industrial commu- 
nity as Wachovia afterwards became. 

It was Bishop Spangenberg who called the settle- 
ment Wachovia. The word is derived from two Ger- 
man words, "wach," a meadow, and "aue," a stream. 
Wachovia lay within the possessions of Lord Granville 
and from him the Moravian Brethren purchased it in 
August 1753. Two months later their plans were com- 
pleted, and October 8, 1753, twelve unmarried men set 
out from the Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, Penn- 



German 97 

sylvania, to break ground for the settlement of Wacho- 
via in North Carolina. No better evidence is needed 
of the shrewd, commonsense of these German settlers 
than the simple fact that this small band, whose mis- 
sion was to lay the foundation of civilization in the 
wilderness, consisted of a minister of the gospel, a 
warden, a physician, a tailor, a baker, a shoemaker and 
tanner, a gardener, three farmers, and two carpenters. 
In the industrial community which they went out to 
found there was to be no place for drones. It is also 
interesting to note that they were fully conscious of the 
significance of their undertaking. Looking far into 
the future with rare vision they foresaw the growth 
and development of their community and the intense 
interest with which posterity would inquire into its 
beginnings. Accordingly from the very first they re- 
corded their daily doings to the minutest and most 
trivial details. There is but one other instance in our 
history of such foresight, i. e. the colony which Baron 
de Graffenreid planted at the confluence of the Neuse 
and Trent rivers, and of which he himself left for 
posterity a most interesting account. 

The little band of Moravian Brethren made their 
journey from Pennsylvania to Carolina in a large 
covered wagon drawn by six horses. Their route car- 
ried them over mountains wild and rugged, into forests 
dense and dark, and across rivers whose banks were so 
steep that frequently the travelers had to grade them 
before their wagon could enter the streams. Nearly 
six weeks were required for the trip. When they left 
Pennsylvania they were oppressed with heat; when 
they reached North Carolina the ground was covered 
with snow. At 3 o'clock Saturday afternoon, Novem- 
ber 17, they reached the spot where now stands the 
7 



98 Race Elements of North Carolina 

town of Bethabara, better known in its immediate 
neighborhood as "Old Town." There they found shel- 
ter in a log cabin which had been built but afterwards 
abandoned by a German adventurer named Hans "Wago- 
ner. It was an humble abode, without a floor and with 
a roof full of cracks and holes, but in it the Brethren 
held their first divine service and had their first love 
feast. Sunday was observed as a day of real rest, but 
was followed by weeks of earnest, manly toil. One of 
their first cares was to enlarge their cabin and to 
lay in a supply of provisions for the winter. Their rifles 
supplied them with game in abundance. Salt was 
procured from Virginia, flour and corn from the 
Scotch-Irish settlements on the Yadkin, and beef from 
those on the Dan. In December they sowed their 
first wheat. A few days later came the Christmas sea- 
son, and on Christmas Eve they gathered around the 
great open fire in their log cabin to hear again the 
wonderful story of Bethlehem. "We had a little love 
feast," says their faithful journal; "then near the 
Christ Child we had our first Christmas Eve in North 
Carolina, and rested in peace in this hope and faith. 
. . . All this while the volves and panthers howled 
and screamed in the forests near by." 

Throughout their first year the Moravian Brethren 
kept steadily at their tasks, and before the year had 
gone they had in operation a carpenter shop, a tailor- 
ing establishment, a pottery, a blacksmith shop, a 
shoe shop, a tannery and a cooper shop; had harvested 
wheat, corn, tobacco, flax, millet, barley, oats, buck- 
wheat, turnips, cotton, garden vegetables; had cleared 
and cultivated fields, cut roads through the forests, 
built a mill and erected several cabins. They made 
long journeys, going as far north as Philadelphia and 



German 99 

as far south as Wilmington. The physician, Dr, Lash, 
made trips twenty, fifty and even a hundred miles 
through the forests to visit the sick and relieve the 
suffering. The Brethren had many visitors who came 
long distances to consult the physician or to secure the 
services of the shoemaker or the tailor. There was 
but little money in the backwoods, and sometimes these 
visitors paid for the purchases in ways that were odd 
and amusing. A stranger passing through Wachovia 
wanted to buy a pair of shoes, but having no money, 
he agreed in payment for them to cut down and trim 
one hundred trees! Within three months, during the 
year 1754, 103 visitors came to Wachovia. The next 
year the number was 426. Visitors became so numer- 
ous that the Brethren decided to build a "strangers' 
house." This was the second building in Wachovia. 
Four days after it was finished it was occupied by a 
man and his invalid wife who came to consult the phy- 
sician. Travel between Wachovia and Pennsylvania 
was frequent and the little colony continued to grow. 
More unmarried men and later a few married couples 
came from Pennsylvania, and by 1756 the Bethabara 
colony numbered sixty-five souls. Until the outbreak 
of the French and Indian War, the Moravians were on 
friendly terms with the Indians. Indeed, one of their 
purposes in coming to North Carolina was to preach 
the gospel to them. They treated the Indians kindly, 
and the Indians spoke of the fort at Bethabara as "the 
Dutch fort, where there are good people and much 
bread." But with the breaking out of the w^ar the sav- 
ages became hostile, and their enmity gave the Mora- 
vian Brethren much trouble. The Brethren were com- 
pelled to build a fort, to arm every man in the colony, 
and to place sentinels around the settlement. Many 



100 Race Elements of North Carolina 

thrilling incidents occurred during the war, and the 
Moravians were frequently called on to render services 
to their white neighbors. From thirty and forty miles 
around families sought refuge at Bethabara where all 
learned to love and respect the Moravian Brethren, 
some even applying for membership in the Moravian 
Church. 

After the close of the war the settlement grew more 
rapidly. Two towns, Bethabara and Bethania, were 
founded before 1760, but from the first the Brethren 
intended that the chief town should be in the center of 
Wachovia, and they thought the closing of the Indian 
War and the reestablishment of peace a favorable time 
to begin it. 

The first act in the founding of this new town, which 
received the name of Salem, took place January 6, 
1766. During the singing of a hymn the work was be- 
gun by clearing a site for the first house, and on Feb- 
ruary 19th eight young men moved into it. Other 
houses were then erected in quick succession, and dur- 
ing the next year many of the Bethabara community 
moved to Salem, where they were joined by more 
Brethren from Bethlehem, and even by a goodly num- 
ber directly from Germany. Salem soon became the 
principal settlement of the Moravians in North Caro- 
lina. The same man whose adventure in the Carolina 
wilderness I described in the beginning of this lecture, 
visited Salem in 1773 and left an interesting descrip- 
tion of the town and its people as it appeared just upon 
the eve of the Bevolution. Leaving Salisbury he went 
first to Bethania and then to Bethabara. "This town," 
he said, "is ten miles from the other; but being in- 
formed that Salem was the principal, I immediately 
proceeded on after breakfast, and arrived there about 



Geeman 101 

noon. . . . This society, sect, or fraternity of The 
Moravians have everything in common, and are pos- 
sessed of a very large and extensive property. . . . 
From their infancy they are instructed in every branch 
of useful and common literature, as well as in mechani- 
cal knowledge and labour. . . . The Moravians 
have many excellent and very valuable farms, on which 
they make large quantities of butter, flour, and provi- 
sions, for exportation. They also possess a number of 
useful and lucrative manufactures, particularly a very 
extensive one of earthen ware, which they have 
brought to great perfection, and supply the whole coun- 
try with it for some hundred miles around. In short, 
. . . they certainly are valuable subjects, and by 
their unremitting industry and labor have brought a 
large extent of wild, rugged country into a high state 
of population and improvement."^ 

Thirteen years later, just at the close of the Kevolu- 
tion, another traveler visited Wachovia, and left us 
his impression of the Moravian settlement.'* After 
visiting the Guilford Battle Ground, he says: 

"I pursued the route of Cornwallis in his advance, 
and entered the possessions of the happy Moravians, so 
justly distinguished for their piety, industry, and ad- 
mirable police. The road from Guilford to Salem was 
good, and the country pleasant. ... In the gen- 
eral face of the country. . . . this region closely 
resembles the South of France. . . . 

"The moment I touched the boundary of the Mora- 
vians, I noticed a marked and most favorable change in 



3. Smyth: Vol. 1, Chapter XXIX. 

4. Watson, Elkanah: Men and Times of the Revolution, 

292-94. 



102 Race Elements of North Carolina 

the appearance of buildings and farms; and even the 
cattle seemed larger, and in better condition. Here, 
in combined and well-directed effort, all put shoulders 
to the wheel, which apparently moves on oily springs. 
We passed, in our ride, 'New Garden, a settlement of 
Quakers from Nantucket. They too, were exemplary 
and industrious. The generality of the planters in this 
State depend upon negro labor, and live scantily in a 
region of affluence. In the possessions of the Mo- 
ravians and Quakers, all labor is performed by whites. 
Every farm looks neat and cheerful; the dwellings are 
tidy and well furnished, abounding in plenty. 

"In the evening, I attended service at the Moravian 
chapel. This was a spacious room in a large edifice, 
adorned with that neat and simple elegance, which was 
a peculiar trait of these brethren and their Quaker 
neighbors. On our first entrance, only two or three 
persons were visible; but, the moment the organ 
sounded, several doors were simultaneously opened. 
The men were ushered in on one side, and the women 
on the other; and in one minute the seats were filled, 
and the devotees arranged for worship. The devotions, 
on that occasion, were merely chanting a melodious 
German anthem, accompanied by an organ. 

"In the morning, I was introduced to Mr. Bargee, 
their principal. He conducted me through all their 
manufactories, and communicated to me, with much 
intelligence, many facts in relation to the tenets and 
habits of this devout and laborious sect. Salem com- 
prehended about forty dwellings, and occupies a pleas- 
ant situation. . . . Every house in Salem was 
supplied with water, brought in conduits a mile and a 
half." 



German 1^3 

In 1791 tlie Moravian Bretliren liad the liouor of 
entertaining at Salem George Washington, President 
of the United States. In taking his leave after a 
round of festivities, Washington addressed a letter to 
"The United Brethren of Wachovia" in which he said: 
"From a society whose governing principles are indus- 
try and love of order much may he expected toward 
the improvement and prosperity of the country m 
which their settlements are formed, and experience 
authorizes the helief that such will he obtained." Wash- 
ington's words were prophetic. The influence of the 
Moravian Brethren, although exerted so unostenta- 
tiously as to pass abnost unnoticed, has heen altogether 
out of proportion to their numerical strength, ihe 
thousands of visitors who have been attracted to 
Wachovia by the peculiarity of their customs have re- 
turned to their homes profoundly impressed by the sin- 
cerity of their religious devotions, their zeal for edu- 
cation, and their remarkable skill in the development 
of large industrial enterprises. It is surely no acci- 
dent thart the oldest college for young women m the 
Southern States is located in their midst; nor was it 
a freak of chance that the most important manufactur- 
ing city in North CaroHna should be the twin sister ot 

^^xTese customs and characteristics of tliej^^^^^/^ 
settlers were, perhaps, more accentuated m Wachovia 
than anywhere else in ^rth Carohna, but they we e 
by no means confined to the Moravians. Had we paid 
a visit, let us say one hundred years ago, to Lmcolnton, 
Salisbury, Concord, and their neighboring commun- 
des we Luld have found that Salem was but a well- 
sloped type of the several German — n^^^^^^^^^^ 
the State. Everywhere the people would have greeted 



104 Race Elements of North Carolina 

us in the German language, or a corrupted form of it 
known as "Pennsylvania Deutsch," At this time, too, 
the names of the people retained not only their German 
pronunciation, hut also their German spelling. Our 
modern Coon was then Kuhn, Barringer was Behrin- 
ger, Smith was Schmidt, Williams was "Wilhelm. Thus 
it happens that many persons in our history whose 
names would indicate an English ancestry were really 
of German descent. 

The houses of the German settlers, usually construct- 
ed of logs, were far less pretentious than the manor 
houses on the broad plantations of their English coun- 
trymen in the East; but they had in a much more 
marked degree the charm of simplicity and orderli- 
ness ; and their farms though smaller were better culti- 
vated, their cattle fatter and sleeker. The superiority 
of the German farmer in these respects over the Eng- 
lish planter was due not only to his greater industry 
and thrift, but also to the difference in his system of 
labor. It was the difference between the skilled, care- 
ful and energetic labor of the free white man working 
under the impetus of self-interest, and the inefficient, 
wasteful, compulsory labor of the enslaved negro Avork- 
ing under the impulse of the lash. In the German 
household everybody worked, including father. They 
not only raised their own food, but also made their 
own clothes. The women were expert weavers, and 
knew how to dye and combine colors into beautiful fab- 
rics. Their markets were Cross Creek [Fayetteville], 
Columbia and Charleston, and a trip to market was a 
very serious and sometimes a dangerous undertaking. 
It took four or five weeks to carry a wagonload of 
produce to Charleston and bring back supplies for the 
farm. Such trips were not made often, and as a con- 



German ^^'^ 

sequence tlie German settlers learned to depend on 
their own industry and skill for most o£ their necessi- 

The center of tlie German settlement was the church 
and the schoolhouse. Generally the same huildings 
served for both, and the same man as minister and 
teacher Their churches at first were built of logs, but 
as they increased in prosperity these log churches were 
replaced with frame buildings and sometimes with 
brick and even stone structures. The principal book 
in the German home was the Bible. Among the Ger- 
mans as among the Scotch-Irish the leader of the peo- 
ple was usually the minister. He had need to be not 
only a scholar, but a man of great physical power and 
endurance for his office was no sinecure. The people 
of his congregations were scattered over a large terri- 
tory, sometimes forty and fifty miles from their 
churches, and the minister was compelled to take long 
and lonely rides to visit them. These rides were no 
child's play. They led him over rough roads, running 
through dark forests, crossing rivers and creeks with- 
out bridges, and took him out in snow as well as m 
sunshine He often met danger, too, from wild beasts, 
for there were still plenty of panthers and wild cats m 
the woods, and bears frequently crossed Ihb P^th. 

One of these ministers, who came directly from Ger- 
many, has left us an interesting account oil^'^^'^'^ 
among the German settlers. Landing at Charleston 
he rode three hundred miles on horseback to Lincoln- 
ton He was fourteen days on the journey, sometimes 
spending the nights at the homes of settlers and some- 
times cLping in the woods. But when he reaped 
Lincolnton, he says, the warm welcome 1- -.un- 
paid him for all the troubles and discomfoits ol his 



106 Race Elements of N^orth Carolina 

long trij). The people came many miles to welcome 
him.. He found them open and frank in their manner 
and speech. They knew nothing of compliments, and 
did not know how to flatter, but they spoke in a way 
that showed they knew how to think. So many of 
them invited him to go to their homes that he hardly 
knew how to choose. "They helped us to buy a fine 
plantation of 200 acres," he said, "and as soon as we 
were settled the people from all parts of the country 
brought us flour, corn, hams, sausages, dried fruit, 
chickens, turkeys, geese, butter, cheese and other things 
in such quantities that for many weeks we had no 
necessity for spending one penny for housekeeping." 

We learn from his story many of the interesting so- 
cial customs of the Grerman settlers. One incident that 
he relates shows their law-abiding character. "One 
day," he said, "I passed the courthouse in Lincolnton 
at the moment when a man was standing in the pillory. 
A German settler called to me to stop a while and see 
how Americans punish rogues and thieves. I asked 
him: 'This criminal certainly is not a Grerman?' He 
replied : 'JSTever has a German stood in pillory in Lin- 
colnton, nor has a German been hung in this place." 

Another characteristic of the Germans was their 
humor. They believed thoroughly in the philosophy of 
the old rhyme so frequently on their lips, 

"A little nonsense now and then 
Is relished by the best of men." 

While at work they worked earnestly, but when holi- 
days came they indulged to the fullest degree in their 
fun and sports. They loved their Easter celebrations 
and their Kris Kringle frolics. Then, too, they had 
their quilting parties, their spinning matches, corn 



German 107 

shuckings, log rollings, house raisings, and other 
amusements that not only afforded fun and frolic 
for the young, but combined utility with sport. Box- 
ing, wrestling, racing, swimming, and other outdoor 
sports were favorite pastimes. 

In the development of their religious and social life 
the German settlers had one very decided advantage 
over the other early settlers in North Carolina. As I 
have already pointed out they came to the colony in 
congregations, and settled as communities. This fact 
of course enabled them to organize churches and schools 
much more readily than those who settled on widely 
scattered plantations. Those pioneer schools were ex- 
ceedingly crude institutions. The schoolhouses were of 
logs; the cracks were stopped up with red clay; they 
had no floor except mother earth; the desks were logs 
trimmed flat on the upper side, with no backs and no 
rests for the books or the arms. There were no black- 
boards, maps or pictures. About the only decoration 
of which such a school could boast was the long hickory 
rod over the teacher's chair, which, like the sceptre of 
the king, 

"shows the force of temporal power, 
The attribute to awe and majesty, 
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of . . . ." 

the pedagogue. 

Of course, as the settlements grew and prospered, 
those first schoolhouses gave way to better ones. But 
even the best were unattractive enough. Pennsylvania 
and Germany supplied the teachers, many of whom 
were men of ability and profound scholarship. As a 
rule they combined the two ofiices of teacher and 
preacher in the same person. The text-books used in 



108 Race Elements of North Carolina 

the schools for many years were all written in the Ger- 
man language, and English was not used at all. It was 
not until some years after the Revolution that English 
found its way into these German schools, and even 
then it had to take a secondary place. The first Eng- 
lish school was opened in 1798 in Cabarrus county by 
John Yeoman. This reform won its way slowly 
against the opposition of the older settlers who clung 
tenaciously to the language of their cradles. But their 
children finding themselves in a State in which all 
social, commercial and legal transactions were carried 
on in the English tongue, naturally and properly were 
unwilling to go through life under the handicap of 
being ignorant of the very language in which they 
must transact all of their affairs. Of course English 
won the day and in time not only ousted the German 
from the schools, but took its place in the daily affairs 
of the Germans themselves until their very surnames, 
as I have said, became Anglicized. 

Many of these German schools have interesting his- 
tories, a typical one being the Pleasant Retreat Acad- 
emy of Lincolnton, founded in 1813. "The older stu- 
dents delighted to speak of its refreshing shades — the 
oak and hickory, interspersed with chestnuts and chin- 
quepins — and the spring at the foot of the hill." Many 
distinguished men were numbered among its trustees, 
and its teachers, we are told, were men of ability. But 
a school, like a tree, is to be judged by its fruits. What 
kind of students does it have, and what does it do for 
them? Some of the students of Pleasant Retreat 
Academy wrote their names high in our annals. 

How largely the Germans have influenced, and still 
influence the educational thought of North Carolina 
you may infer from the fact that Sidney M. Finger, 



German 109 

for eight years state superintendent of public instruc- 
tion, was of this race; that the president of Salem 
College and of the State ]N"ormal and Industrial Col- 
lege, are both of German descent ; and that the superin- 
tendents of i^ublic schools in at least seven of our coun- 
ties at this time are men of German ancestry. 

It is certainly not without significance that the same 
year, 1813, which saw the founding of Pleasant 
Retreat Academy, also saw the erection at Lincolnton 
of the first cotton mill in l^orth Carolina. The mill, 
the work of a German, Michael Schenck, was the fore- 
runner of that remarkable industrial development 
which has placed North Carolina second among the 
States of the American Union in the manufacture of 
cotton. How largely this State is indebted to her Ger- 
man population for her industrial development will be 
readily seen by pointing out the geographical center 
of the manufacturing industries of North Carolina, 
and by studying the names of the men behind these 
enterprises. In 1910 the sixteen counties which I 
mentioned as having been settled largely by Gemians, 
contained 162 of the 402 cotton, woolen, silk and knit- 
ting mills then in the State, or more than 40 per cent. 
That this industrial development is due primarily to 
the Germans is shown not only by the names of the 
pioneers in manufacturing industries in this State — 
the Schencks, the Frieses, the Holts, the Reinhardts, 
the Hokes, and many others — but also by an examina- 
tion of the officials in those manufacturing corporations 
even of today. These manufacturing enterprises are 
largely owned or controlled by men of German descent. 
This industrial development, indeed, is the most strik- 
ing and important of the contributions of the Germans 
to our civilization. 



110 Race Elements of North Carolina 

But in many other spheres of activity the Germans 
have contributed leaders, — in war, in politics, in law, 
in literature, and in religion. To war they gave Gen- 
eral Stephen D. Eamseur and General Robert F. 
Hoke; to politics, Thomas L. Clingman and P. M. 
Simmons, United States senators; to law, Charles 
Price, David Schenck, and William A. Hoke;; to litera- 
ture, John H. Boner and Frances Fisher Tiernan, bet- 
ter known to her readers as Christian Reid. In the 
religious life of the State the Germans have played 
a part all out of proportion to their numerical strength. 
Of course in the Lutheran, the German Reformed, and 
the Moravian Churches the leaders are almost entirely, 
if not entirely, German. But that their influence is not 
limited to these religious organizations was strikingly 
pointed out to me a few days ago, when my attention 
was called to the fact that at the last session of the 
Western Conference of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, the names of five out of eleven presiding eld- 
ers chosen, and of sixty-seven, or 29 per cent of the pas- 
tors assigned to congregations, indicated that they were 
of German ancestry. 

Throughout our history, the Germans have been the 
most conservative force in the life of the State. In 
every crisis they have acted as a steadying influence 
upon their more volatile countrymen, and when the 
Englishman, at some fancied trespass upon his prop- 
erty rights, or the Highlander, at some imaginary 
affront to his personal dignity, or the Scotch-Irishman, 
at some supposed attack upon his political or religious 
liberty, has been ready to fly into a passion and upset 
the whole plan of creation rather than submit to 
wrong, real or imaginary, the German has moved con- 
servatively, advised caution and patience, and always 



German HI 

stood for the established order and for peace. Thus in 
1776 he held hack when his English and Scotch coun- 
trymen were ready to plunge the country into rebellion 
and revolution; in 1860 he opposed slavery and seces- 
sion. Though he could not prevent revolution in 
1776, nor secession in 1860, his influence undoubtedly 
went' far toward making both those movements more 
orderly and less noisy in ITorth Carolina than in some 
of her sister states; and so today, he continues to exer- 
cise a similar conservative, silent, and unostentatious, 
but a most potent and salutary influence, which will 
not, indeed, prevent our people from joining in the 
progressive tendencies and movements of the age, but 
will influence them to do so with cautious thoughtful- 
ness and quiet dignity. It is worth much to North 
Carolina— much more than will ever be generally real- 
ized—that she has in her population the thoughtful, 
steadying, conservative influence which is so distinc- 
tive of her German citizenship. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Sources : 

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Grimes, J. Bryan: Abstracts of North Carolina Wills. 
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Grimes, J. Bryan: North Carolina Wills and Inven- 
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Salley, Alexander S., Jr.: Narratives of Early Carolina, 
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Saunders, William L. (ed.) : The Colonial Records of 
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Catesby, Mark: Natural History of Carolina, Florida, 
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Watson, Elkanah: Mea and Times of the Revolution. 

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Alderman, E. A.: William Hooper. 

Ashe, Samuel A'Court (ed.) : Biographical History of 

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1905-1917. 
Caruthers, E. W.: Life and Character of Rev. David 

Caldwell. 1842. 
MacLean, J. P.: Flora MacDonald in America. 1909. 

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Arthur, John Preston: Western North Carolina: A His- 
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Nash, Francis: Hillsboro, Colonial and Revolutionary. 

1903. _,, 

Rumple, Jethro: A History of Rowan County. 1881. 

(Reprinted 1916.) 



114 E.ACE Elements of North Carolina 



Tompkins, D. A.: History of Mecklenburg County. 
1903. 

Brinson, S. M.: The Early History of Craven County. 
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McNeely, Robert Ney: Union County and the Old Wax- 
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Nash, Francis: The History of Orange County. (North 
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General Histories: 

Ashe, Samuel A'Court: History of North Carolina, 
Vol. I, 1908. 

Bancroft, George: History of the United States. 

Connor, R. D. W.: History of North Carolina, 1584-1783. 
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Bassett, John S.: Landholding in Colonial North Caro- 
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1898. 

Bernheim, G. D., and Cox, George A.: History of the 
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